Emotional Leadership in an Intergroup Conflict Game Experiment

Overall, we find that leaders contribute more than followers and that leading-by-example as well as emotional leadership have a significant effect on the behavior of followers. Although, leaders do not always use these mechanisms wisely. This behavior contrasts strikingly with the Nash equilibrium predictions. Furthermore, we find that both leaders and followers contribute more then predicted by a standard Nash equilibrium. These results are shown to be in line with the affective tie model of van Dijk and van Winden (1997), the imitation model of Cartwright and Patel (2010), and a psychological costs model of Dufwenberg, Gächter, and Hennig-Schmidt (2011).