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A Cost of Leadership in Human Groups
Author(s) -
Piyapong Chantima,
Morrell Lesley J.,
Croft Darren P.,
Dyer John R. G.,
Ioannou Christos C.,
Krause Jens
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
ethology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.739
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1439-0310
pISSN - 0179-1613
DOI - 10.1111/j.1439-0310.2007.01382.x
Subject(s) - task (project management) , obstacle , psychology , group (periodic table) , social psychology , cognitive psychology , computer science , economics , geography , management , chemistry , archaeology , organic chemistry
Group living is the result of a dynamic trade‐off between associated costs and benefits. However, these costs and benefits are not necessarily distributed equally across different spatial positions of groups which may result in different fitness returns for individuals occupying different positions in groups. Here we consider whether leadership of a group during a navigation task in humans may have a specific cost associated with it. Pairs of students performed a counting task whilst walking through two obstacle courses, once as leader and once as follower. We found that leaders made significantly more errors in the counting task than followers suggesting that there is an attention cost associated with leadership/navigation behaviour.