Research shows that those who spend more time speaking tend to emerge as the leaders of groups, regardless of their intelligence.

研究表明，那些花更多时间说话的人往往会成为团体的领导者，无论他们的智力如何。

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if you want to become a leader, start yammering. It doesn’t even necessarily matter what you say. New research shows that groups without a leader can find one if somebody starts talking a lot.

如果你想成为领导者，就开始喋喋不休。你说什么甚至都不一定重要。新的研究表明，如果有人开始大谈特谈，没有领导者的团体就能找到一个。

This phenomenon, described by the “babble hypothesis” of leadership, depends neither on group member intelligence nor personality. Leaders emerge based on the quantity of speaking, not quality.

这种现象，用领导力的“喋喋不休假说”来描述，既不依赖于群体成员的智力，也不依赖于个性。领导者的产生是基于说话的数量，而不是质量。

Researcher Neil G. MacLaren, lead author of the study published inThe Leadership Quarterly, believes his team’s work may improve how groups are organized and how individuals within them are trained and evaluated.

该研究的主要作者、研究员尼尔·麦克拉伦（Neil G. MacLaren）发表在 《领导力季刊》（The Leadership Quarterly） 上，他认为他的团队的工作可能会改善团队的组织方式以及其中的个人接受培训和评估的方式。

If you want to become a leader, start yammering. It doesn’t even necessarily matter what you say. New research shows that groups without a leader can find one if somebody starts talking a lot.

如果你想成为领导者，就开始喋喋不休。你说什么甚至都不一定重要。新的研究表明，如果有人开始大谈特谈，没有领导者的团体就能找到一个。

This phenomenon, described by the “babble hypothesis” of leadership, depends neither on group member intelligence nor personality. Leaders emerge based on the quantity of speaking, not quality.

这种现象，用领导力的“喋喋不休假说”来描述，既不依赖于群体成员的智力，也不依赖于个性。领导者的产生是基于说话的数量，而不是质量。

Researcher Neil G. MacLaren, lead author of the study published inThe Leadership Quarterly, believes his team’s work may improve how groups are organized and how individuals within them are trained and evaluated.

该研究的主要作者、研究员尼尔·麦克拉伦（Neil G. MacLaren）发表在 《领导力季刊》（The Leadership Quarterly） 上，他认为他的团队的工作可能会改善团队的组织方式以及其中的个人接受培训和评估的方式。

“It turns out that early attempts to assess leadership quality were found to be highly confounded with a simple quantity: the amount of time that group members spoke during a discussion,”sharedMacLaren, who is a research fellow at Binghamton University.

“事实证明，评估领导素质的早期尝试被发现与一个简单的数量高度混淆：小组成员在讨论中发言的时间，”宾汉姆顿大学研究员麦克拉伦分享道。

While we tend to think of leaders as people who share important ideas, leadership may boil down to whoever “babbles” the most. Understanding the connection between how much people speak and how they become perceived as leaders is key to growing our knowledge of group dynamics.

虽然我们倾向于认为领导者是分享重要想法的人，但领导力可能归结为谁“喋喋不休”最多。了解人们的发言量与他们如何被视为领导者之间的联系是增加我们对群体动力知识的关键。

The power of babble喋喋不休的力量

The research involved 256 college students, divided into 33 groups of four to ten people each. They were asked to collaborate on either a military computer simulation game (BCT Commander) or a business-oriented game (CleanStart). The players had ten minutes to plan how they would carry out a task and 60 minutes to accomplish it as a group. One person in the group was randomly designated as the “operator,” whose job was to control the user interface of the game.

该研究涉及256名大学生，分为33组，每组4至10人。他们被要求合作开发一款军事计算机模拟游戏（BCT Commander）或一款面向商业的游戏（CleanStart）。玩家有 10 分钟的时间来计划如何执行任务，而 60 分钟的时间来作为一个团队完成任务。该小组中的一个人被随机指定为“操作员”，其工作是控制游戏的用户界面。

To determine who became the leader of each group, the researchers asked the participants both before and after the game to nominate one to five people for this distinction. The scientists found that those who talked more were also more likely to be nominated. This remained true after controlling for a number of variables, such as previous knowledge of the game, various personality traits, or intelligence.

为了确定谁成为每组的领导者，研究人员要求参与者在比赛前后提名一到五个人来获得这一殊荣。科学家们发现，那些说话更多的人也更有可能被提名。在控制了许多变量之后，这种情况仍然是正确的，例如以前的游戏知识、各种人格特质或智力。

In an interview withPsyPost, MacLaren shared that “the evidence does seem consistent that people who speak more are more likely to be viewed as leaders.”

在接受PsyPost采访时，麦克拉伦分享说：“证据似乎确实一致，即说话更多的人更有可能被视为领导者。

Another find was that gender bias seemed to have a strong effect on who was considered a leader. “In our data, men receive on average an extra vote just for being a man,” explained MacLaren. “The effect is more extreme for the individual with the most votes.”

另一个发现是，性别偏见似乎对谁被认为是领导者有很大的影响。“在我们的数据中，男性平均会因为是男性而获得额外的选票，”麦克拉伦解释说。“对于获得最多选票的个人来说，这种影响更为极端。