Research@Ourso: Talk It Out, Babble On
December 04, 2025
Why do we tend to follow the person who talks the most?
Ever notice how some people naturally take charge in meetings, even if they aren’t necessarily the most experienced or knowledgeable? Often, the person who talks the most ends up being seen as the leader. This is a well-established phenomenon known as the babble hypothesis, which proposes that simply speaking more can increase your perceived leadership status in a group setting. But despite a deceptively simple concept, complex questions still surround this theory decades after it was first defined.
A new research paper titled “Signaling with babble? Exploring the effects of gender and speaking time on leader emergence” looks to break new ground by re-examining the babble hypothesis through a modern lens. The authors, who include Michael Johnson of the LSU Rucks Department of Management, set out to answer three core questions to unpack the why behind the babble:
- Do team members accurately perceive how much their peers are speaking?
- Does a speaker's gender change how the effect is perceived by others?
- Does the pattern of how people speak matter?
“We were interested in better exploring the idea that a person gains influence simply by speaking more, regardless of the content,” Johnson said. “We had all been in meetings where a specific person dominated the conversation and others ‘fell in line’ behind them, even though other perspectives were in the room.”
Correlation vs. Causation
A core challenge for researchers in this area has been untangling whether talking more causes someone to be seen as a leader, or if leaders simply tend to speak more. Most prior experiments could not easily separate the two, a problem academics call "endogeneity bias” – a fight between correlation and causation.
To solve this, the researchers designed a carefully controlled experiment: 198 student participants were organized into 38 teams and tasked with working together on a simulation. After the simulation, team members completed a survey where they rated leader emergence (ranking who led the most in the simulation) and the perceived speaking time of their fellow team members.
Team interactions were conducted over Zoom and recorded, which allowed researchers to measure objective speaking time (the exact proportion of time each person spoke), providing a qualitative contrast to the survey data.
Climbing the Mountain
Each team worked together virtually on a well-known leadership simulation where members must collaborate to overcome challenges and "summit" Mt. Everest.
To succeed, the team must share information effectively; each member is given unique details such as weather forecasts or health information about the climbers. Failure to accurately communicate and analyze information has consequences on team performance. The roles of each team member were randomized to guard against possible bias in speaking time.
“We needed a controlled experiment to properly isolate and assess speaking time’s influence,” Johnson noted. [The Everest simulation] helped us track team member behaviors across time as they worked on various challenges … the simulation is built so that each member has unique and important information that no one else has. Thus, each person should be equally motivated to share that information.”
The Babble is Real, But Questions Remain
The study confirmed that the babble hypothesis is real. The average objective speaking time had a direct, positive effect on leader emergence. Speaking more caused others to see the speaker as a leader. Surprisingly, the research also revealed no significant gender differences. Both men and women were perceived as leaders at similar rates when their speaking time was considered.
What does this mean for businesses?
The results have enormous practical implications for anyone who works in a group setting. For individuals, it shows that not speaking up can reduce your perceived influence, even if your contributions are valuable. And if you find yourself in a group with a potentially dominating speaker (referred to by the researchers as a ‘Chatty Charlie’), you and your colleagues need to strategically speak up more to dilute their signal. For managers, it shows a need for awareness of this powerful bias. Is the person who talks the most truly the most competent, or just best at signaling?
"This research area hasn’t fully explored the ‘honesty’ of speaking time as a signal for a good leader. On the one hand, speaking time is associated with measures of intelligence. On the other hand, it may better represent underlying attributes like dominance. Thus, it is still important to better distinguish the value of speaking time to the group."
What comes next?
The researchers were unable to prove how the pattern of speech might impact perceptions. While the study could measure speech patterns, the experiment's design didn't allow them to prove if those patterns caused the leadership ranking. Johnson notes that future experiments are needed to determine whether a consistent speaker is perceived differently from one who speaks in bursts.
Despite some questions remaining just out of reach, this new research provides a robust confirmation of the "babble hypothesis." It shows that leadership is not just a quality you have, but a status you are granted – and one of the most basic ways to reach for that status is, simply, to speak.
About the Researcher
Michael Johnson’s work examines the unique workplace consequences of issues like social class, gender, criminal histories, obesity, and unethical workplace behaviors. His research has been published in top management journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Business Venturing, and Leadership Quarterly, and has also been featured in press outlets such as USA Today, Forbes, and the New York Post.