Date of Award

Spring 2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Program/Concentration

Psychology

Committee Director

James P. Bliss

Committee Member

Karin Orvis

Committee Member

Barry Gillen

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.P68 P76 2011

Abstract

The use of computer game based architectures may help provide a safe, controlled environment in which geographically dispersed military units can develop leadership skills while rehearsing a specific task such as search and rescue. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among task difficulty, team task performance, role assignment and emergent leadership within a shared leadership model using a modified version of the popular video game, Half Life 2 ™. The researcher assessed leadership emergence through verbal content analysis methods that have only been employed in email and message boards media formats. Across levels of task difficulty and role assignment, individuals generated new ideas about how to find the medic, asked questions related to the task and gave information to the other team member. For all task conditions, the individual immersed in the virtual environment issued such utterances more often than the map holder and the immersed individual was rated as the overall leader by team members. Individuals rated each other as sharing leadership roughly 50% of the time, regardless of the level of task difficulty. Results of this study indicate the need for a coding scheme that taps into appropriate leadership behaviors within distributed teams using video game technology.

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In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/yfj4-9w63

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