Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others 219
HughPickens.com writes Everyone who is part of an organization — a company, a nonprofit, a condo board — has experienced the pathologies that can occur when human beings try to work together in groups. Now the NYT reports on recent research on why some groups, like some people, are reliably smarter than others. In one study, researchers grouped 697 volunteer participants into teams of two to five members. Each team worked together to complete a series of short tasks, which were selected to represent the varied kinds of problems that groups are called upon to solve in the real world. One task involved logical analysis, another brainstorming; others emphasized coordination, planning and moral reasoning. Teams with higher average I.Q.s didn't score much higher on collective intelligence tasks than did teams with lower average I.Q.s. Nor did teams with more extroverted people, or teams whose members reported feeling more motivated to contribute to their group's success. Instead, the smartest teams were distinguished by three characteristics (PDF). First, their members contributed more equally to the team's discussions, rather than letting one or two people dominate the group. Second, their members scored higher on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which measures how well people can read complex emotional states from images of faces with only the eyes visible. Finally, teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. It appeared that it was not "diversity" (having equal numbers of men and women) that mattered for a team's intelligence, but simply having more women. This last effect, however, was partly explained by the fact that women, on average, were better at "mindreading" than men.
Interestingly enough, a second study has now replicated the these findings for teams that worked together online communicating purely by typing messages into a browser . "Emotion-reading mattered just as much for the online teams whose members could not see one another as for the teams that worked face to face. What makes teams smart must be not just the ability to read facial expressions, but a more general ability, known as "Theory of Mind," to consider and keep track of what other people feel, know and believe."
Interestingly enough, a second study has now replicated the these findings for teams that worked together online communicating purely by typing messages into a browser . "Emotion-reading mattered just as much for the online teams whose members could not see one another as for the teams that worked face to face. What makes teams smart must be not just the ability to read facial expressions, but a more general ability, known as "Theory of Mind," to consider and keep track of what other people feel, know and believe."
The white in your eyes (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The white in your eyes (Score:4, Insightful)
are thought to be there specifically so others are able to see who you are communicating with. Improving cooperation between people.
This doesn't bode well for those of us who lean autistic.
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Re:The white in your eyes (Score:5, Interesting)
I am autistic and it is true I can't work in a team, at least not with neurotypical people who can't communicate properly and who rely far too much on emotions instead of simply talking. Each time I tried, I always felt extremely frustrated with the others and the others felt extremely frustrated with me.
Right now I'm a computer consultant. The major problem I face is when I must meet clients. Even in a technical meeting, people are in constant need of socialization. If they don't have this need satisfied, they simply can't work. So in a meeting, I can't think because I must use all of my mind to provide this socialization to others.
My solution is to communicate mostly with emails and telecommute. Of course I can't work for long for the same client, because after a while that client feels frustrated I don't want to meet more often with him. I now live in Quebec, which means I speak French, and the simple fact that I always say "vous" and can't say "tu" to a client frustrate them after a while.
Having said that, when the team is clearly hierarchical and tasks are clearly divided, I outperform about everyone.
An example of that was my two years of military service (as a conscript). I was promoted corporal in 6 months, then master corporal 6 months after and sergeant after another 6 months (in my regiment, there was only two places for sergeant conscripts and I was one of those two).
Because of my military experience, I do think autistic people can work very well in a team. The problem is our world is not a technocracy nor a meritocracy like in the military, but a "socialocracy". It is ruled and shaped by people who have the best social skill, not by people who have the best technical skills. And of course, "hypersocial" people want a world where their social skills is the most important. So anyone who doesn't play their game, using the rules which give them an advantage, is someone they don't want to work with.
Re:The white in your eyes (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have to be autistic to find oversocialisation in work meetings to be a problem. Where I work easily half our team meetings are taken up with jokes and banter. Its ridiculous because we actually have work to discuss and work to do after the meetings.
If only people would stop cracking jokes things would be so much better for me. We are there, at the work place, to do a job. That job is not being comedians, its being engineers.
And I am very proudly neurotypical.
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This right here demonstrates the "feminine advantage". They are indoctrinated into social politics. So it seems obvious that they would have an advantage once a company grows so large that office politics is more important than anything else.
It doesn't necessarily mean that such entities are more productive. Usually they are much less so.
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You seem to be the one with all of the butt hurt and vitriol.
It's rather ironic really.
Clearly you're suffering from an inferiority complex and need to lash out.
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Thing is, we're awesome, problem is that we're not awesome in a way that will satisfy most NTs feelings; and most of the world is run on nothing but the feelings of NTs. For instance, very few people get fired due to incompetence, they get fired due to the bad feelings that their incompetence causes; which in some organizations is avoidable (mainly in governmental and nonprofit organizations, or volunteer/nonpaid positions), allowing incompetent people to keep their position. Autistic people on the other hand, we often get fired because we don't fit in with the other employees; no matter if we are competent in all other aspects of the job.
Of COURSE the world is run in the feelings of NTs because THATS NORMAL. NT's are normal people, not abnormal people, not people with special needs. Just ordinary, normal people.
Also, and this may be news to you, normal people aren't all the same and some happen to dislike oversocialisation. They can dislike oversocialisation and still be totally normal people and not in the least bit autistic.
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Fitting in with other people is one of the most important aspects of most jobs.
I keep hearing this. And not believing it.
The most important part of a job is being able to do the job.
Nothing GREAT comes from "just fitting in". If you can't handle DOING THE JOB then screw you. You suck. Live with it.
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The most important part of a job is being able to do the job.
First of all, I didn't say fitting in is the most important part, but that it's one of the most important ones. Capisce? Second, nothing is in isolation. What you do affects other people in the company and (in the case of a small-to-medium business) the company itself, and not only through your fulfillment of the stated specs of the job. What autists and aspies fail to realize is that there are many things which are implied and not written in the spec, and that is very efficient because they're automaticall
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Unfortunately, you're forever blinded to this world.
That was his point.
And it's a loss for the world as well.
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are thought to be there specifically so others are able to see who you are communicating with. Improving cooperation between people.
This doesn't bode well for those of us who lean autistic.
Communication is a two way street.
In my experience with Autistic people, you can easily overcome the difficulties they have with talking by being a good listener. Having an Autistic person in your team can be a boon, as long as you can communicate with them (especially if you work in IT).
But being a good team is more than just communication (which is talking and listening, people to talk but dont listen are terrible communicators, even worse than an autistic person) but organisational skills. A team n
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Doesn't this study show that women and men don't work as well together as they do separately, and that trying to increase diversity results in less effective teams, and was a bad idea all along?
So, the smart thing to do is separate the women off away from the men, encourage them to form teams entirely composed of women, and give them some meaningful tasks to do that won't overly burden them physically and will exploit their particular strengths.
This is very innovative stuff.
Re:The white in your eyes (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't this study show that women and men don't work as well together as they do separately, and that trying to increase diversity results in less effective teams, and was a bad idea all along?
No. What it says is that team performance increases as the number of women increase. So teams of all men do worst, teams with some women do better, and teams with all women do best. I doubt if this is actually true, but that is what the study says.
We see few Nobel prizes going to teams of women researchers, few successful corporations with all female executives, and few political systems run by women. If women are so much better at teamwork, why don't we see more successful teams of women? Why isn't there a private equity firm that specializes in acquiring companies, firing all the male executives, replacing them with women, and then cashing in as the profits soar? The results of this study don't mesh with reality.
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We see few Nobel prizes going to teams of women researchers, few successful corporations with all female executives, and few political systems run by women
I mostly agree. Females do devote quite a disproportionate effort in reproduction, so that explains it partially. But the questions you put do raise serious doubts on this study.
Why isn't there a private equity firm that specializes in acquiring companies, firing all the male executives, replacing them with women, and then cashing in as the profits soar? The results of this study don't mesh with reality.
This could be because this study wasn't published 10 years ago?
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Teams are overrated anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Teams are great for doing parallel repetetive tasks such as testing thousands of compounds to pharmacological activity or building a bridge or whacking out 10K lines of boiler plate code. But if you want inspiration or genius or a completely take on a problem then you're looking at individuals (even if they've stood on shoulders of giants). Einstein didn't think up Relativity in a scrum with powerpoint presentations (ok they weren't around then but you get the point), nor did Turing come up his theories on conference calls.
This will sound arrogant but I don't care - teams are great for the slightly dim and/or lazy people in the world because it means they don't have to put so much effort in or think too much. Hence why management tend to be so fond of them.
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Your rant does not communicate arrogance, it communicates insecurity and an inferiority complex. But it is ok, not everyone is cut out for teamwork, and there will always be small simple tasks open to people like you.
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"both thrived in collaborative environments where it took multiple great minds working together to solve complex problems."
If the collaborative enviroments had anything to do with it then all those theories would have been released as a team effort.
"Your rant does not communicate arrogance, it communicates insecurity and an inferiority complex."
Does it? Oh. I guess I'd better go and have a cry then hadn't I.
" But it is ok, not everyone is cut out for teamwork,"
You're right - some of us don't need others to
Re:Teams are overrated anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
No it doesn't sound arrogant, it sounds defensive and most of all stupid. Stupid because you are missing the whole point, the article is not about who is better, it is about what is needed to make a good team. And yes teams are important, not just for your stupid examples. More generally there is a need for organization, you can't just let people do their thing in their corner and hope that you get everything you need. So there is a need for "smart" people and a need for "social" people, we need various qualities to achieve things.
Re:Teams are overrated anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Most tasks don't require genius, they require quality. Rockstars often produce interesting stuff, but in a company you can't rely on them. If they leave you have an unmaintainable system that only one person ever understood. The lack of diverse ideas and experience leads to an extreme kind of monoculture. Teams are better for most tasks.
Re:Teams are overrated anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Einstein didn't think up Relativity in a scrum with powerpoint presentations (ok they weren't around then but you get the point), nor did Turing come up his theories on conference calls.
Yes, they did. Both of them.
Okay, not scrum, powerpoints or con-calls, obviously, but both of them deeply relied on collaboration with others. Einstein relied heavily on chats with various friends, especially Besso, Solovine, Habicht and even to some extent his wife (during his early work, before they separated) to refine his ideas. There's no doubt that he was the ultimate source of the core elements of his theories, nor that he did nearly all of the work to elaborate them, but bouncing ideas off of others was critical to his method of work. Turing I know less about, but I know that he also worked as part of a team, and many of his brilliant ideas built upon the work of those around him.
I do think your examples are well-chosen, though, because I think they're examples of the sorts of people who least benefit from teamwork. For everyone else, it's even more important.
Really? Theory of Mind (Score:5, Funny)
What makes teams smart must be not just the ability to read facial expressions, but a more general ability, known as "Theory of Mind," to consider and keep track of what other people feel, know and believe."
That sounds a whole like Empathy to me, but dressed up in some fancy new clothes.
Re:Really? Theory of Mind (Score:5, Informative)
It's more than just empathy, it's knowing what other people know and how they think about things.
A classic example I remember from years ago was a salesman telling some people about a computer they were interested in. He told them it had 1GB of RAM and 250GB hard drive an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, without realizing that they had no idea what any of that meant. If he had understood that they didn't know that, and that they thought of RAM in terms of "it runs a few different apps and doesn't slow down" and the hard drive as "it can store a lot of photos and videos" he would have been following the Theory of Mind.
Engineers often do it as well. They explain things in the terms that they understand them, rather than in a way that accounts for the listener's knowledge and beliefs about how things are. In a group some people become ineffective and don't contribute anything meaningful because of gaps in their knowledge or because they have incorrect assumptions that others are not aware of, and no-one is a good enough communicator to recognize that and bring them up to speed.
Re:Really? Theory of Mind (Score:4, Funny)
Start with a precise explanation. If anyone is too ignorant to understand the precise explanation, they should speak up and ask questions. People who don't speak up; THEY have the problem communicating. Not the people explaining things.
Re:Really? Theory of Mind (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not a very effective way of communicating. The way you phrase it you seem to blame people for being ignorant, but often the reason they are coming to you for information is to fix that, or maybe they just have a different area of expertise. No-one can be an expert on everything.
Being a good communicator requires you to be objective and helpful. Figure out what the important information is, what the listener is likely to know and what their current understanding is likely to be. I think a lot of people really struggle with the last part, because they assume that if someone doesn't have the same understanding as them then they are just wrong or stupid and must be corrected with a simple statement of fact. Aside from anything else they are much more likely to agree with your position if you explain it well and in terms of their current understanding and beliefs.
It's not about who has a problem or winning and losing, or weeding out the morons etc. It's about getting everyone on the same page so that you function as a team, as a hive mind.
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If your customers did not understand you, it is your problem whether or not it's your fault.
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To put it bluntly, a serial killer can have well-developed theory of mind but no empathy whatsoever. Theory of mind refers to the ability to simulate the minds of other beings to deduce things about their internal state.
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The naturalists who originated the phrase would have said
"Theory of mind refers to the ability to simulate the minds of other beings to deduce things about their future behavior".
There are complex behaviors in many species that can only be explained by assuming that one individual is able to put itself into the headspace of another and so anticipate what that other individual is about to do. This sometimes involves a definite sense of how the world must appear to the other. There is irrefutable evidence o
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Yes, mirror neurons form parts of brain that have this hardware virtualization functionality to run another's brain as a virtual machine in one's own brain. But so far such functionality has primarily been found in primates - with mimicry portion also found in birds.
The non-primate mammal hunting in packs can also be explained by genetic instinct - like a lion brought up in a zoo hunts less efficiently but similarly to a lion of a forest. Similarly the pack hunting behaviour can be explained by instinct - t
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Forgot to add - a lioness and a leopardess [vidoevo.com] spent a lot of time together and were "friends". They could hunt individually, but could never succeed hunting together. Lions hunt in prides, and leopards rarely but surely do hunt together.
If they had a theory of mind they might have been able to hunt together, but the instinct theory explains their inability. I can't be sure, of course.
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How could you know when you identity every person in the entire Empathy clan as just some Jim Bob or Jane Barb from poverty valley?
Empathy was never a precise concept in the first place, and most people are too lazy to clearly distinguish the perceptual side of empathy from the dispositional side (the later of which is heavily conflated with approval seeking and conflict avoidance, and these are further conflated with meekness/
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/i... [warosu.org]
Re:Really? Theory of Mind (Score:5, Interesting)
I think "empathy" is generally characterized more by feelings. You see someone who looks upset, and you find it upsetting. I think this "Theory of Mind" business is more about understanding what else might be going on in another person's head.
Like... you know how when you're a kid, and you're shocked to see your teacher at the grocery store? You hadn't really thought about it, but you had somehow assumed that your teacher lived at the school, and perhaps didn't need to eat. And the important part there is, you hadn't really thought about it.
I think that's sort of an early level of the realization, "Other people are also people, like me. They have lives of their own, they think their own thoughts, just like me." There are deeper understandings of this that people develop, like perhaps realizing, "I sort of think of life like a story, and I'm the main character. But other people must also think of themselves as the main character. To an outside observer, there's no reason why my perspective is more correct."
And I think that in adulthood, some people develop that sensibility in much deeper and more profound ways. They can put themselves in another person's shoes, and not just feel empathy for them, but actually understand how things must appear to another person. They can think about things like, "I disagree with you, but I completely understand why you think that, and I'm not sure you're wrong." Some adults develop very strong skills and impulses along those lines, while others don't. Many people, even into adulthood, think as simply as, "I disagree with you, and therefore you must be wrong and stupid."
I'm not sure that's what they mean, but I would guess that's the sort of thing being included in "keeping track of what other people feel, know, and believe."
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Empathy and theory of mind are related, for sure, but they might be very distant cousins.
Theory of mind is a term used to describe the ability some species have where individuals behave as if they can put themselves into the minds of others. Lions exhibit it when one lioness will deliberately allow itself to be seen and in doing so cause the herd of antelope to move into the ambush that has been set up by other females in the pride. Each participating huntress is somehow aware of how the prey is likely to
Emoticons work. (Score:4, Funny)
"replicated the these findings for teams that worked together online communicating purely by typing messages into a browser"
So I guess that emoticons work for "out-of-band" communications. :-)
Of course, if it were Linus Torvalds going the ASCII art route, it would probably be more like "You #-( @@ $@%$ %*^@^##% dummy!" :-(
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Fortunately, Slashdot doesn't support Unicode, so we're safe.
not surprised (Score:3, Funny)
I just had this feeling all along that the results would turn out this way.
Significant correlation? (Score:2, Informative)
To quote from the report (c is a magic number they have calculated to indicate how successful groups were at collaborative tasks)
"c was positively and significantly correlated with the proportion of females in the group ( r =0.23, P =0.007)"
"there was as ignificant correlation between c and the average social sensitivity of group members, [...](r=0.26,P=0.002)"
What? Since when 0.23-26 correlation is 'significant' correlation? Just the fact that everything else they have measured had even lower effect doesn'
Re:Significant correlation? (Score:5, Informative)
"(r=0.23, P=0.007)" "(r=0.26,P=0.002)"
What? Since when 0.23-26 correlation is 'significant' correlation?
*significance* is indicated by p: "The smaller the p-level, the more significant the relationship"
*strength* is indicated by r: " The larger the correlation, the stronger the relationship"
http://janda.org/c10/Lectures/topic06/L24-significanceR.htm
Re:Significant correlation? (Score:4, Insightful)
And just to make it clear, r = 0.25 is pretty darn strong, especially for anything involving as many variables as human interaction.
I'm quite amazed it's this large, but then again, it matches my real life experience for complex team-based problems (rather than combining parallel single-person tasks, which is more common, but not nearly as tricky).
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It seems like men are less willing to be aggressive when women are in the group, so rather than pushing their point of view as the only possible "correct" one they will compromise more. I'm not surprised that that results in overall better outcomes because it is more polarized - either the most aggressive guy is right and it turns out great, or he is wrong and it all goes to pot. A consensus and willingness to change change issues are raised is a better strategy on balance.
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Thanks - I stand corrected. I'm not native english speaker and I took statistics classes (many years ago) in my native language and somehow english significance got merged with my native term for strength in my mind.
What I really meant was that r around 0.25 doesn't look like _strong_ correlation to me (which they have never really claimed in the paper, so my attack was wrong), but west below suggests 0.25 is a lot in social science...
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Imagine if having more men increased a team's (Score:5, Insightful)
intelligence. The study would not be publishable.
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Joke or not, pretty much. And that gives some major bias. Depending on how studies are done, things with very close metrics like effect of genders on XYZ can go either way. But since you can only publish those that show women are better, it ends up that all studies show women are better at everything.
Every so often you'll have a study that shows the opposite for some specific or another, but that will get spinned somehow. ie: I read a study recently about how women don't do well in competitive environments
I have grown skeptical of these experiments. (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of some simple tasks which anyone can do, if we throw in some tasks that could only be done by one or two persons in the team, then it would be more realistic. Something like some step needs derivative of a function and only one team member remembers calculus 101, or requires translating a passage from French to English.. The moment you introduce variation in skill sets among the team members, agile for software breaks down. This experiment too might have different results.
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The variability in skill set, the varieties of skills needed to complete the project is not fully addressed.
This is a good point. But I'm looking at a lot of businesses that are essentially de-skilling their work environment in order to increase worker fungibility. Any design that cannot be meaningfully understood by 95% of the team is sent back to the drawing board. It's a bit frustrating to have to leave elegant, efficient, but complex designs on the table, but businesses that are doing so seem to be
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"The moment you introduce variation in skill sets among the team members, agile for software breaks down."
Out of interest, why? and what particular part of agile given that it's a broad topic with lots of methodologies?
I don't see how speciality requirements causes an issue, agile doesn't remove the necessity to ensure a team is competent in having the required skillset for the task at hand.
Agile isn't magic, many things from the past are still relevant, if you don't have enough French translators to do the
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I immediately considered the impact of this study on what we know about Agile development.
While I genuinely like the agile development concepts, I foresaw some fundamental problems with it. One of the major keystone values is a reliance on person-to-person and person-to-group communications. Something that, stereotypically, those in the software industry are not very keen on, and are rarely hired for.
If we believe this study, and deep interpersonal skills(*) are required to effectively leverage a team, it
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Perhaps this would be a reason to encourage more women to enter our field? Whether by nature or nurture women seem to generally be at least a bit better at interpersonal stuff than their comparably competent male counterparts. I suspect that having even 20-30% of the team be significantly better communicators than the current norm would dramatically improve the outcome.
Of course the counterpoint would be that to be effective the new members would have to be welcomed and integrated into the team - somethin
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For Agile to work well, you need to have experienced, capable team members, who can manage themselves.
If you have that then why would you use Agile? If you have experienced and capable members with the maturity to manage themselves then trying to micromanage them ala Agile is counter-productive. Agile is almost exclusively for poor and/or inexperienced teams who lack the maturity and self-discipline to manage themselves, which is why they have to be micromanaged and reminded once/twice a day about what they are doing.
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Micromanaging is almost always counterproductive, in any management method. I understand wher
freeze-frame campfire empathy (Score:2)
Just last week I read an entire book by Allan and Barbara Pease. Even this book (which promises the moon in three easy lessons) says that body language is best interpreted though consistent clusters.
Here, the static eye test amounts to a form of dead reckoning.
Claiming that this equates to the general ability to read people smacks of claiming that someone who can track big game from muddy impressions and broken twigs has the cognitive drop on Charles Darwin on all matters of big game observation.
As with pe
Again,a very scientific psychology study (Score:3)
There's all kinds of wrong in there. First of all, looks like the dots of the study show a - very scattered - vertical pattern, with actually the best teams seeming to have a rather average RME (higher end though).
Also, who says there isn't a correlation with intelligence in general and RME? Seems to me people "who care" or "pay better attention" will be better at RME as well.
And what's the task to be solved? Apparently seems to be a sudoku puzzle. If you don't really know how that goes to begin with, you're already at loss (even if you're smarter).
Theory (Score:5, Interesting)
There are studies that show that women are less likely to speak up when outnumbered by men. So if the most successful teams were ones where everyone contributed equally, it seems like those groups would tend to either have more women so that women are more willing to speak up, or no women at all (assuming that men are all likely to contribute in that environment).
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/2... [salon.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01... [nytimes.com]
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I think what's going on is that this test is pretty limited in its scope. In the real world, women tend to be more risk-adverse than men. They tend to stick with the tried and true instead of striking out into the unknown. If you limit the group task to something which i
How to apply this (Score:2)
Perhaps not "mindreading". (Score:2)
It appeared that it was not "diversity" (having equal numbers of men and women) that mattered for a team's intelligence, but simply having more women. This last effect, however, was partly explained by the fact that women, on average, were better at "mindreading" than men.
Perhaps the women felt more comfortable and/or were allowed to speak more w/o interruption when there were more women on the team. From the NY Times article Speaking While Female [nytimes.com] (Why Women Stay Quiet at Work):
Almost every time they started to speak, they were interrupted or shot down before finishing their pitch. When one had a good idea, a male writer would jump in and run with it before she could complete her thought.
Sadly, their experience is not unusual.
Suspecting that powerful women stayed quiet because they feared a backlash, Professor Brescoll looked deeper. She asked professional men and women to evaluate the competence of chief executives who voiced their opinions more or less frequently. Male executives who spoke more often than their peers were rewarded with 10 percent higher ratings of competence. When female executives spoke more than their peers, both men and women punished them with 14 percent lower ratings. As this and other research shows, women who worry that talking “too much” will cause them to be disliked are not paranoid; they are often right.
reading emotion in faces (Score:2)
their members scored higher on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which measures how well people can read complex emotional states from images of faces with only the eyes visible.
Well, there goes Google.
could be fems average better at groups, men one by (Score:5, Interesting)
It could very well be that females average better during the group portion of tasks, the part that requires a lot of communication and empathy; then when everyone goes back to their desks men average better at _____. I know in my own life women tend to be more interested in having in-depth conversations and understanding each other, on average. Mean tend to be more interested in gadgets and how they work. Again, I'm speaking of averages - individuals vary considerably.
Physically, men tend to do better at tasks involving short bursts of strength like dead lifting, while women tend to have more stamina. It's not unlikely that females mind tend to be better at understanding another person's point of view, while men might be better at disregarding the feelings of a bill collector and hanging up on them or interrupting, not allowing the collector to go off an tangents not appropriate to the issue at hand. That seems to be true from my experience - women generally aren't as comfortable being "rude" . When there is a conflict, it's sometimes effective to first give someone with high estrogen a chance to understand bo
submitted too soon (Score:5, Informative)
When there is a conflict, it's sometimes effective to first give someone with high estrogen a chance to understand both sides' viewpoints and work out a mutually agreeable solution. If that ddoesdoesn't work because the other side is being aggressive, it's often someone with more testerone who is best suited to put their foot down, to say "no, we're not doing that" and stay firm even if it hurts someone's feelings.
Once more, I'm speaking in terms of averages. There are also empathic men and coarse women. Vanzant could probably kick Chrisley's ass.
Communication skills (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't the USAF have a study somewhere that women are better at communicating data, period?
They would use female radio operators since they found it easier to understand female voices over lossy radio channels. Maybe something to do with the higher pitched voices, or better use of intonation in language, or maybe something empathic or psychological that we don't understand but the effect was there.
Then there are the Germans who refuse to take orders from female voices to the extent that GPS manufacturers have to make special male recordings for those markets. Was that a factor during WWII as well?
On the flip side, was it the USAF or NASA that was investigating the long term social groups for extended space missions, and found that grous of all-men could get along, but introduce one female and they start fighting for her attentions? But that was still better than an all-female crew, who would eventually but almost always turn on each other after too much time working together?
Re:Communication skills (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Communication skills (Score:4, Informative)
Then there are the Germans who refuse to take orders from female voices to the extent that GPS manufacturers have to make special male recordings for those markets. Was that a factor during WWII as well?
No, it was the other way around. When the British started doing "Funk spielen" mainly with German nightfighter controllers (breaking into the circuit and giving false or conflicting orders etc.) the Germans answered by using female [google.se] intercept operators exclusively as there was no female British personell flying in combat. This promted the British to bring their own female operators along for the ride, aso.
Many other advantages are reported from having female ground control officers, for example easily being able to hear if the communication is from your fellow (male) pilots on that frequency or from ground control. (Yes, call signs are meant to do that, but voice differences that carry over radio give a more secure and faster way of determining the sender).
When it comes to automated voice messages in the cockpit I seem to remember USAF research in the F-16 time frame, that showed that female voices ("pull up [wikipedia.org]") were preferable to male voices, due to better legibility and easier distinction against all the male pilot voices on the radio. The best effect was reportedly had by having a very young female (child) voice, think 8-9 year old, but that was never implemented due to the creapiness factor. But I can't find any reference to this research when Googling, and wikipedia says that new research points to this result being less stable today than what it was.
that and once you divide them into two categories (Score:2)
I suspect that once you divide them into two categories, "high testerone" and "low testosterone", the individuals in those groups would exactly match "male" and "female". Depending on luck, you might have one Barbara Hudson who is closer to the middle, but still ends up in the same group anyway.
I mention it only because unlike studies, in real life we can recognize that Mike Tyson is probably going to have more exaggerated "male" characteristics than Chrisley. Still, I bet Hilary Clinton has more estrog
Re:could be fems average better at groups, men one (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the genetic differences are overblown. Social differences are a much bigger factor, and either gender can easily learn the skills needed to be a good communicator and team player. Rather than being a gender issue, it sounds more like a training issue.
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I think the genetic differences are overblown. Social differences are a much bigger factor, and either gender can easily learn the skills needed to be a good communicator and team player. Rather than being a gender issue, it sounds more like a training issue.
I think it's not so much a question of learning the skills, but actually employing them at the appropriate time. Plus the difference in perspective on how to handle a problem. A man raids the fridge and takes the last piece of cake, even though you had told him you were saving it for one of the kids when they get home. When the issue comes up, the man says "So I'll go out and buy another cake. Problem solved!" The woman says "That's not the real problem here."
The guy doesn't understand - he'll "fix" the i
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Man here (from birth)... I don't see how selfishness is an inherently male trait. I would never think taking someone else's food was OK as long as I replaced it. Obviously, at the moment there's a problem, and fixing problems you created is clearly inferior to not causing them in the first place. I would not want someone who wasted time and professional reputation, by constantly fixing the problems they caused, on my team.
What I see with men-- including myself, of course-- is that we DO want to fix probl
not the eating, but fixing different problems (Score:4, Insightful)
I _think_ Barbara's point wasn't about the eating, but about which problem we address. Suppose a stereotypical woman accidentally eats the cake - she wasn't listening or whatever. It's discovered and you "confront" her. She'll address the problem - the fact that you're mad. That's the main problem that she sees, the offense caused. She'll apologize, offset it by doing something else nice, etc - never once thinking to go get a another piece of cake.
An hour later, she'll ask how you're feeling about the event. The man will reply "I feel hungry, because you ate my damn cake.". :)
The guy is more likely to identify the problem as the fact that the cake is now gone, and forget to address the offense he caused.
This might be a somewhat silly example. Where I think it has practical application is when a friend is telling you about a problem they are having. A woman most wants to vent, a friend should listen. Her male friend's first instinct may be to help her SOLVE the problem. She may you to listen to her problem and perhaps her feelings about it. When a male friend is telling you about a problem, it means they want to borrow your trailer, which will solve the problem.
Obviously this is a big generalization, but there is significant truth in it.
lol (Score:2)
Lol
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To be honest, when I (a man) say something like that it's just because I don't want to admit I've done something wrong by proposing a seemingly easy and obvious fix, then denying the greater problem. I try hard not to do it and back-track when I do, but in our culture males seem to be pushed towards the "always right, never back down" nonsense from an early age.
Of course I know a couple of women like that too, but I think it's a different problem... I can only give you the male perspective.
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Of course I know a couple of women like that too, but I think it's a different problem...
Menopause :-) And while I say that sort of tongue-in-cheek, the effect is very real. One of my sisters thought it was unfair that I could get HRT (hormone replacement therapy) but she couldn't, even though she was menopausal and felt she could benefit from it. People under stress tend to have lower empathy, and menopause is definitely stressful [wikipedia.org].
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The woman says "That's not the real problem here."
Instead of saying, for example, "My complaint is not about the cake, but that:
In case this is obvious, I don't want to sound patronizing. I jus
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When a woman says "That's not the real problem," it's an indirect approach to discussing the problem, rather than immediately jumping into it with both feet with an accusation and making it look like an inquisition..
"I don't feel like I can trust your intentions when speaking to you" and "I get the sense you don't consider what I want on an equal level as what you want in a given moment" can come across as pretty accusatory, and put the guy directly into defensive mode, because you're jumping right into th
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I wonder.
I read a study (that I can't find online) that compared sole owners of small businesses by gender, showing the standard male advantage in terms of profits and such, and then subdivided by motivations. One of the differences - cultural origin or not - was that men valued financial success greater than women, who preferred things such as flexible work hours, family priorities, and so on.
The surprise was that within these subdivisions, women generally outperformed men. Those who were most motivated
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Unless you're autistic...
Since that's the definition of autistic, yes.
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Explain the Apollo program then. What a joke this site has become. Nothing but Bolshevik propaganda, in one article after another. I'm surprised this one got through, as it doesn't mention 'climate change'.
I wonder whether you would get a different result when "the shit hits the fan" rather than with "let's play some games". I have seen women who work very well under pressure, but anecdotally I think I have seen more women come to peaces under pressure than men. Mind you when I have seen men have caved in under pressure it has been catastrophic, like six months off work with stress related disease or getting fired for throwing a monitor across the room.
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. . . getting fired for throwing a monitor across the room.
Evolution is pretty quick to weed out individuals of the primary-care-giving gender who chuck the thing they're holding when stressed. Turning into a crying heap is a much, much safer option when holding the baby.
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At least it seems they were testing against a wide range of "team problems". The intresting metric for the etical ones may have been how fast the team can agree on a common viewpoint, *espescially* if there isn't a right or wrong answer. And they included logical, organisational and creative tasks, too.
And if you want to have any relevance for real life teams, (instead of purely scientific) your experiment should be a crossection of tasks that mirror the daily life.
Re:A known "Fact"? (Score:4, Insightful)
So what were they supposed to say about the study? That their actual observation (that the more women in the group, the more successful the collaboration) was wrong - after all someone on Slashdot with anecdotal experience knows better because figuring out whether women are open to sexual advances is difficult for him?
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If it was men, they would have buried the result rather than write an article about it.
I'll just be waiting here while women found all-female companies and kick the butts of the mixed-gender companies.
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Ever wonder why most guys don't feel the constant need voice their feelings? Perhaps it's because men don't have to, they are masters of non-verbal communication skills.
No, it's because voicing your feelings is seen by men as a sign of weakness, so they bottle it inside, get frustrated, angry, and when it finally comes out, run for cover. On the other hand, it's seen by women as a sharing exercise to build friendship and trust.
And both sexes generally perceive it the same way. Women regard men who are too "emo" as weak, and men regard women who don't talk about emotions as "ice queens."
This creates problems for women because they can't resolve conflicts with the men in
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so they bottle it inside, get frustrated, angry, and when it finally comes out, run for cover.
Or perhaps men just experience emotions less intensely, thus have less need to vent them.
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That seems unlikely in the extreme. Also, highly insulting to men. Ms. Hudson's statements mesh well with my own experience.
It takes a lot of training and practice to overcome that social conditioning. It's absolutely worth it. You will improve your personal and professional interactions. Because that explosive outburst, it's what gets you in trouble. When you're five, it's no big deal. When you're a full grown adult, it leads to things that get your bad self fired or locked up or dead.
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First of all, why would this be unlikely? Women's and men's brains are wired slightly differently, why would that not have an impact on how intensely the brain perceives emotions considering it has an impact on a lot of other things.
Secondly; why would this be insulting? You're good at some things and not as good at other things. So what? Why would you have a need to feel better than the average person at everything? More importantly though; whether you feel insulted by something doesn't make any difference
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Very good point. Unfortunately for men, reliability seems to end up far more important for long-term viability, which is why most businesses have been de-emphasizing the super-star approach over building lower-skill fungible teams. (And, to be honest, it seems to be working for them.)
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The more women, the better. I suppose that's why there are so many successful "all-women" companies out there.
I'm starting to wonder if all you jokers read the same paper FTFA as I did, and not just the article. The paper points points out in no uncertain terms that the inverse correlation between group performance and participation dwarfs the (almost insignificant by comparison) correlation between number of women and group performance.
Is there a correlation between number of females and group performance? Yes, but it's only marginally stronger than the correlation between the highest-IQ of the group and group per
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