The present study deals with leadership emergence in leaderless groups. It examines experimentally the relationship between the amount of anxiety in the here-and-now and the probability of emerging as a leader. Thirty seven groups (randomly constituted) of 4 members each participated in the experiment. The psychoanalytically-rooted hypothesis of this study was that the emergent leader corresponds to the most anxious member of the group. To test this hypothesis, emergent leaders and non-leaders were compared, using a questionnaire designed to measure anxiety within the group. As hypothesized, the findings revealed that emergent leaders were significantly more likely to display a higher anxiety score than other group members. Based on these findings, the author discusses the implications that this exploratory study may have for the understanding of psychoanalytically-oriented group research.