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Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others
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."
are thought to be there specifically so others are able to see who you are communicating with. Improving cooperation between people.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Damn
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.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The more women, the better. I suppose that's why there are so many successful "all-women" companies out there.
"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!" :-(
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Last time one of these studies concluded that groups with more women in them had a higher level of group IQ, the result was completely explained by the metric of quality. Group IQ was a measure of the group dynamic and not the quality of results produced by the people. Objectively if one tests a group on things that cannot be clearly defined as correct, such as math problems and logical problem, then the experiment just measures who agrees with the experimenter. The inclusion of moral questions in a group setting implies poor study design. How can any objective test involve moral questing?
tl:dr, I am butt hurt about objectivity. Academic click bait.
I just had this feeling all along that the results would turn out this way.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Because they don't have long-winded assholes like Hugh Pickens throwing out brain-dulling shitloads of BS every five minutes and can actually focus on what they're doing.
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
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't make 0.25 a significant correlation.
But this is probably the effect of composition of research team. With 2 women and 3 men they had a significantly lower chances of producing something good... If they would only replace one of the men with a women, I'm sure results would be more forthcoming.
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.
intelligence. The study would not be publishable.
I remember reading once how some people just absorb what they want, some grab all they can get and some just depend on others to think for them. This has gone on since man was on Earth. Its why we have leaders and followers and why some never do become leaders. Some can cross over and some just never seem to want or desire a rise to the top.
Teams are a way of increasing reliability, but for true greatness, you need great individuals.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
If it had been "more men equals better outcome", the study would have been labelled sexist, chauvinistic and it would have gotten buried. Since it's "more women", the study is surely "refreshingly challenging our male-centric business world" and a bunch of sociopaths would be pushing for a mandatory female quota on every team.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
Unless you're autistic...
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 personality indicators, one could in all likelihood devise fifteen other masked channels (not all of which consist of static images) with roughly the same degree of outcome correlation (where the reference outcome is something like success in group settings).
I also think this study's emphasis on freeze-frame campfire empathy is unfair to male performance. If you're in the business of poking sharp sticks at snakes or lions, the perceptual ability required is not to determine the animal's emotional state (angry, aggressive, threatened, lethal) but to determine moment by moment whether the animal will shrink back or strike forward.
The Pease book is clearly aimed at people in a sales environment (in which I also include making presentations in a board room) where the ability to form extremely rapid first impressions / first-reaction impressions is critical to career success (as opposed to short-term blood retention).
Compare the "it's not your fault" scene in Good Will Hunting (pachydermous elephant in the room) with the extended marital quarrel in Before Midnight (mass stampede of the unshackled lambs).
In the later case, neither spouse is seeing anything he and she haven't seen before (they could each write a book), but their proficiency in scorched-earth integration to identify a workable point of repair is severely put to the test.
Has anyone looked at the graphs and the "linear correlation" between RME and the "collective intelligence" from the study?
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).
Emotions are the state indicators of the Human Motivation Array (HMA). The degree of satisfaction of the HMA of an individual is indicated by the face and voice and movements of that individual. In complex social interactions (civil society) it is essential that we be able to quickly and accurately assess the state of the person"s HMA that we are interacting with in order to adjust our own behavior. I believe the male facial hair is not a sex indicator but meant to obfuscate the state of one's HMA, to hide it from other males. We must not, in evolutionary time, show fear or anxiety before other males. We take that beard off in complex societies to communicate more effectively, not for hygiene reasons. Women have no facial hair because their internal state must be read more accurately both by other females and by males. We know females have greater communication needs and skills. Their emotional state, and therefore the state of their motivation array is more clearly expressed to those who can read them. And human females have no trouble identifying and mating with a human male with no beard. It can't be much of a male identifier. More primitive societies still retain beards because there is more male to male fear in their beliefs. This is why a Vulcan society based on the suppression of emotion is not possible. They would have no idea if that Vulcan opposite them is about to kill them or cooperate with them. They simply would not be able to read each other.
E Proelio Veritas.
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?
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...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01...
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 immediate problem, and as far as he's concerned, that ends it. The woman is thinking of all the other times he tried to "fix" a problem because he just didn't listen in the first place. So the man is thinking "I fixed it - why is she still nagging me?" and the woman is thinking "How can he *not* get it?"
Having lived on both sides of the gender divide, all I can offer up as an explanation is "it's complicated." I get where both sides are coming from, and the fact that it happens so often seems to point to gender being tied into it. Is it because men are socialized to fix the immediate problem, while women are socialized to look beyond the immediate problem? Is it a testosterone-fueled approach vs an estrogen-fueled approach? It's probably a bit of both, which of course is what makes life interesting :-) Then again, what do I know?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.)
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 the group by having everyone put it all out there nor by attacking the problem the same way as men do, so instead we use a more indirect approach, one that increases cooperation without making the men feel threatened. So, instead of pulling a Linus Torvalds and saying "Your idea is absolutely $(*&^&^$#+)_(* crap", we'll say something like "Maybe we're all looking at this the wrong way" (instead of singling out someone for blame). "We've probably gotten stale, so maybe we should spend a bit of time thinking of other approaches, and get back to this next week?"
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
This sure explains why all the top500 companies have more men than women and are more successful than woman run companies...
And why primary schools in Europe where women increase the level of education has been steadily declining, i call this research bogus based on the fact that real world result completely obliterate this theory..
Where is the Apple or Microsoft founded by women? (right, they all started as 99% male..)
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.
Almost everything you know and have depends on the discoveries and inventions of great people. Reliability is why you're here and can enjoy these things. One without the other is pointless.
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.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Why some cell mates are hornier than others?
Due to the biological differences inherent to men and women, the ideal reproductive strategies are different for men and women, with the tl;dr version of it being quantity and quality respectively. Quantity requires more persistence than nuance compared to determining quality.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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?
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 problems, and save the discussion for later. "Lessons learned", "post-mortem meeting", etc. Women don't seem to like that. For some reason, they want to address the collateral issues at the same time, or even defer the solution in order to perform in-depth problem analysis. This seeming lack or urgency is frustrating to me, personally.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Men are socialized to me more individualistic, while women are socialized to be more comunal.
In your example the man eats the cake because "hey free cake", and when that choice becomes an issue he thinks "what can I do to fix this?". Whereas the woman sees an antisocial behavior (eating food earmarked for others) and tries to correct the behavior so it won't be an issue in the future with negative feedback, being fristrated when the man clearly isn't understanding the lesson she's trying to teach.
I think the root cause here is cultural. Basically men are expected to be self sufficient but women aren't. That double standard breeds a sort of arrogance in men (expecting to solve all problems themselves, and considering admitting fault a weakness), but women being expected to need help, are taught to accept aid and to seek it when they need to thus resulting in them on average having better social skills including in this case the ability to read emotional states of teammates, because they are encouraged to use those skills.
nah.
From an evolutionary standpoint, there is a biological reproductive imperative for women to be social (they need help during child bearing), and men to be slightly more selfish (they spread their seed more if they're not too tied down and are willing to outcompete other males).
obviously, there are lots of complex factors, but from a simple view, it seems reasonable.
Men are physically stronger and have better spatial awareness. They're slightly better at math and hard logic.
On average, women are better socially at reading other people's feelings.
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 by happiness - women were more happy. Those who wanted flexibility - women provided more flexibility. Most strikingly, for those who had financial success - women outperformed the men.
In a culture where we have a gender wage gap, it's hard to claim that women are culturally selected for when it comes to financial success, yet they beat the men. It could be application of cultural norms resulting in better communication, resulting in better success in any endeavors relying on interpersonal interaction, but along the backdrop of higher success rates for college, higher rates of advancement in management, and mirrored trends in other non-repressive countries, it forms part of a larger pattern that seems to strongly suggest that these are genetic differences, and that they have a significant impact.
Besides, we know from studying other primates that there are behavioral differences in genders, there's no reason to expect that we wouldn't have the same proclivities.
What's more interesting to me is that we're well into the transition between societies where stereotypical male traits (aggression, etc) are advantageous, and into one where other traits we could call stereotypically female (such as ability to communicate or emphasize) are becoming key. Perhaps we'll see western society flip these norms in the next 100 years or so? Let's just hope we don't end up wearing silly outfits like they did on Angel One (ST:TNG reference).
I've worked for an almost all female company before and most of their time is taken up with backstabbing each other rather than getting their work done. I had to explain even the simplest things to them over and over. I'm aware that some women are very accomplished but overall it's the men who get the difficult projects done.
. . . 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.
Guys, I have it on very good authority from the scientists at Slashdot that anything showing that groups perform better when women are added is just feminazi propaganda, and an attempt to steal men's rights away. This is obviously more of the same.
You should stop trying to for girls to join teams - it's something they're biologically biased against, because they like pink and dolls and stuff.
I should know, I spent 30 minutes with 2 kids one time, and that showed me very clearly that anecdotes are more important than science.
I'd like to see some guidelines come out of this that will help get the best from any team with any composition. Perhaps some practical ways to help people construct a more effective "Theory of mind".
Nullius in verba
wow, someone's feeling awfully threatened.
I'm betting this only applies to tasks that require cooperation and is detrimental to tasks not requiring it. I work in an 'open collaborative environment' and the constant interruption and distraction are awful
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.
Best post in this story!
https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/i...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Women have a way of wooing men - so the men will listen and cooperate when more female energy is present. That breaks down communication barriers and makes it possible to transmit more of the underlying individual semantics that team members would otherwise hold in. Most men won't tend to listen to each other in the same way.
Also, what kind of teams? Are we talking a bunch of white collar workers here who just got done having one of their square-table meetings? Are we talking teams of boiler-overhaul workers or steel mill workers? I don't see how having a smarter team of boiler-overhaul workers with more women than men are going to perform better and more efficient maintenance on a coal-burning plant. Maybe some women are "walking forklifts," but most steel mill workers are men for a reason - because the raw physical strength required. Are we talking teams of specialist soldiers, like SEALS?
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 (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.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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 just wanted to be unambiguous about what I consider to be the problem."
Maybe it's my background kicking in, but the original phrase is about as useful as, "My computer's not working.", "Well, what happened?", "You mostly know the restricted context in what I use my computer for, just fix it."
Maybe they can just watch that Nicolas Cage animation together and call it a day.
Have you seen the kind of dudes that get the most pussy? (movie stars and dotcom billionaires aside; i mean in average situations) women can't be that good at determining quality, clearly...
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.
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 the mess rather than give him a chance to participate in the process of discovering what the woman is really upset about. Half the time the guy knows that, for example, it's a trust or equal footing issue, and might even say it himself, given a minute.
And even those 4 most feared words - "We have to talk" - is better than "You cheating $%^$@, get the #!)* out now!", and less likely to result in the neighbors calling the cops.
It also works both ways. For example,when you hear "Does this dress make me look fat" and replying "It's not the dress", is just not the way to go, even when your goal is unambiguity.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
If women are good at determining quality in men why does my sister always have such low life boyfriends?
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.
That's a reasonable hypothesis. It seems like you could partially test it by measuring hormones. That is, do high-testosterone women group with the average men or the average women and correspondingly do low-testosterone men group with the average women or the average men? It's only a partial test because hormone levels are far from the only difference between men and women, but they tend to correspond at least partially to things like this.
Unless you're autistic...
Since that's the definition of autistic, yes.
Were all-men and all-women teams tested? If mind-reading is the most valuable skill and women are more skilled than men, surely an all-woman team would be the paragon of teamwork?
It would be an interesting question because the popular stories of all-woman businesses have unhappy endings. Such as this one.
Now I blame the boss in the above article: In the third paragraph she admits her delusions of "...a female-only company with happy, harmonious workers". She opened shop with the philosophy that women are better and will do no wrong; so her business will be full of rainbows and unicorns, world peace and Christmas bonuses. But when the female employees started disrespecting her and neglecting their jobs, she did nothing. She proffers excuses; "... picking my battles carefully" and "... they would behave as they were treated", where her ideology was more important than reality. Contrary to feminist propaganda, a female-dominated workplace is just as destructive as a male-dominated workplace.
Thus, a comparison of all-women versus mixed-gender teams will reveal if gender describes the quality of teamwork regardless of the workplace.
Lol
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 estrogen than most men, even though she has half as much as Katy Perry.
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.
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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And women contribute nothing but are happy to follow. Hence the group with the fewest men (but still some men) will come out ahead. Try a 100% female group and it will go about like the Dutch version of the show Survivor - where they had two islands, one was all men and one was all women. The show was canceled because while the men were quite capable of fishing, building homes and gathering food from the jungle within the first day, the women sat on the beach sunbathing and nearly starved to death by the end of the first week before demanding to be let off the island.
Group collaboration involves disagreements and egos. It involves pointing out the errors of others and instead pointing the right way to go, and having one's errors pointed out. People sometimes get loud and impassioned, which may put off or intimidate or anger other members of the group (without the person getting loud even realizing that he's gotten loud). I seen males do this plenty of times, but I can't recall a woman doing this. Perhaps having a contributing female or two, or a female lead simply smooths the medium of communication.
It could just be that because of how they communicate and interact with males, that women can buffer and modulate the flow of information in a group and thus facilitate it.
Obviously individuals vary significantly but in general I think this is true.
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 to whether it's true or not.
I'm a man and personally I don't feel insulted by the notion that my half of humanity might feel emotions slightly less intensely on average than the other half of humanity.
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(I'm the GP.)
While the two groups correspond pretty closely, there is some overlap. Looking for data on it, the best I found is this graph, which gives a vague idea of what the distribution looks like (and the reference mentions measurement by saliva samples not blood samples, so less invasive).
I actually wasn't as worried about correctly categorizing low vs. high testosterone individuals as wondering if there was a correlation along the lines of "lower testosterone individuals were even better at working in teams" which would be more precise than the binary classification of gender and help distinguish whether the effect is biological or cultural.
That's an interesting chart, thanks.
It may also be that the cultural reinforces the biological . Gay guys often ADOPT the higher pitched, softer voice which is characteristic of women and biologically feminine men ((who, like women, have high luteinizing hormone) in the same way that thugs adopt the thug way of speaking, as part of that culture.
First, your statement flies in the face of pretty much all of the established science. Second, it's horribly sexist to be suggesting that men don't have feelings. It's demonstrably false. If men did not have strong emotions that needed to be expressed, there wouldn't be so many men in prison for crimes of passion.
You might want to look into some of the available Emotional IQ training. You're not seeing something that's happening in front of you every day. Once you can see those things, you'll be very happy with the improvements in your personal and professional life.
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All this money spent endlessly year after year to answer the most fundamental of questions that anyone over the age of 40 usually figures out on their own. I do not at all mean to imply that people over 40 are somehow "smarter" or "more experienced" than someone who just turned 18!! There are plenty of 18 year old's that are quite mature and have figured this out too. But usually one has to be in management for a year, or two, before they figure it out.
It's so insanely simple. Let's start with why some sales people are really successful and some suck, and resort to being lying douche bags:
In any transaction where the sale price is high enough to warrant a sales person... People don't buy shit because it's the best, or it is the lowest price, or because it's superior... They buy from a particular person BECAUSE THEY LIKE THEM
Similarly, in any TEAM be it software engineers, or fast food workers the most productive, most efficient, and most amazing teams are made up of people WHO LIKE AND RESPECT EACH OTHER. And no matter how fucking awesome of an engineer you think you are, the truth is that Good software is actually mostly about good relationships between people... It doesn't matter what the mix of young/old male/female white/black onshore/offshore smart/stupid is... not one bit.
But instead we have these idiot eggheads coming up with stupid crap in the name of "diversity" and "mulit-culturalism" and "group management paradigms" all of which are crutches for idiots who don't grasp the most obvious, common sense realities of humans working together. I'd wager a year's salary that these eggheads have massive ego's, don't get along with each other at all, and are secretly at each other's throats. And they therefore believe that the rest of us must also walk around with an air of intellectual superiority. They are wrong...
I've worked in horrible, toxic I.T. environments, and I've worked in environments where I couldn't wait to get to work every day. The difference? I think I already explained that...
Murphy was an optimist
that it might be dependent on whether they make the dumbest ones the bosses or not?
Does science say womens' and mens' brains are identical? No, it doesn't. There are differences. If you don't believe me, ask your doctor. Also, try to explain why most women feel like woman and most men feel like man.
Did I say men don't have feelings? No, I didn't. I merely suggested they might _EXPERIENCE_ them _LESS INTENSELY_. Basically like all humans experience emotions at a different level of intensity. I was merely suggesting there might be some bias coming from gender.
Do you have any numbers to back up your claim of "so many men in prison for crimes of passion"? I couldn't find any. Only thing I could find even remotely applicable was an article on how men are more likely to get longer sentences for crimes of passion. http://www.psmag.com/legal-aff...
I'm sure you'll continue fighting your imaginary strawman, but I shall have no further part in it.
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I also ran this test on my teams several times. The idea was to see if a group could survive in a hostile environment, like the Moon, better than the individuals in the group. The plain answer is no. Any time some technical knowledge was required, it was essential that those individuals that HAD the technical knowledge made their contributions. Without them, the group failed utterly. Without the group, the people with the tech knowledge at least had a chance.
Women were about 1/3 of these groups. They tended to participate well and accepted the group outcomes well. However, they sometimes resented the inputs of the most knowledgeable men. I heard the comment, "My opinion is as good as your opinion" many times. However, the random opinions led to the failure of the group to survive.
I believe the results of tests like these are thoroughly dependent on the technical challenge of the problem and some reasonable distribution of technical knowledge among the participants. There is no such thing as a "generic" problem. If it is a real problem, it is because no one has seen it before. Testing group dynamics on generic problems is meaningless.
It's a heavily contested area of study. One side claims that men are more intense and thus more readily hit a limit where the emotional mechanisms must be suppressed in order to avoid harm. This group also tends to subscribe to the idea that men have a higher tendency to express emotion physically as opposed to verbally. The other side claims that men feel less intense emotion, but because they are taught to bottle up what they do feel it only ever appears in intense bursts. This group tends to subscribe to the idea that physical expression of emotion is deleterious.
An interesting branch of work on autism, known as the intense world theory, posits that the difficulties faced by many autistics stem from being overwhelmed by their experience of the world. If this turned out to be valid, it would lend a lot of credence to the idea that the men are suppressing emotion out of necessity and not social conditioning, much like how autistic persons attempt to withdraw from the world of sight and sound.