Granger Leadership in a Novel Dyadic Search Paradigm

Understanding the dynamic nature of emergent team properties such as collaboration and role differentiation could inform intervention methods that aim to improve team outcomes. Often such emergent properties are studied in heavily controlled experiments that constrain how these properties develop. In this study, we use a novel paradigm for which to study emergent team properties in a dyadic team setting. Participants are granted extensive autonomy to determine their strategy as they navigate an immersive environment to pursue their objective of locating and defusing improvised explosive devices. We use Granger causality methods to identify when a participant's behaviors are predictive of their teammate's behaviors, which we refer to in this study as Granger leadership. Participants that did the most leading in their team were identified as leaders while their teammates were identified as followers. Results indicated better task performance for teams that more evenly shared leadership responsibilities. We also found that gaze fixation rates increased and blink rates decreased with increasing Granger leadership values. This indicates that Granger leadership may be a surrogate for task engagement, and that interventions aimed at improving team performance should attempt to encourage engagement of the followers within a group.