At 1:08 AM -0400 3/12/13, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
On Mar 11, 2013, at 6:54 PM, Dan Harkins <dharkins@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In other words, the statement that gender and racial diversity in
groups makes them "smarter" has no basis in fact. Do you feel that
an all-female group is stupider than a similarly sized group that is
equal parts male and female? Really?
Actually, Dan, there are well-regarded academic studies that show that groups that contain women are smarter than all-male groups, regardless of the relative intelligence of the group members. Surprising, perhaps, but true. Here is a pointer to a discussion of one of them:
http://www.antonioyon.com/group-intelligence-and-the-female-factor
When I started reading that I thought that it was
counter-intuitive that having smarter people in the group doesn't make
it smarter, but having more women (regardless of individual
intelligence) does. Reading further, I see that the apparent
counter-intuitiveness was really a difference in the meaning of
"smarter" as applied to groups. The link seems to be
only to an abstract, so I don't know if an all-female group would be
smarter than, say, one that was 75% female or 95% female.
The abstract did discuss specific attributes that females seemed
to bring to groups that resulted in the smarter outcomes (body
language differences, more openness, more effort to draw out unpopular
opinions, fostering greater trust). I suppose there must be
studies looking to see if people (including males) can be specifically
trained to do better in these areas. I wonder if the linkage
between these traits and women is equally valid for engineering
disciplines, given the widely accepted stereotype of engineering types
rating low in these areas? I wonder if some training along these
lines might be good for WG chairs and ADs?
--
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal; facts are suspect; I speak for myself only
-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no
spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil
influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for
they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and
perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and
under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved
up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one
didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just
fine.... --Stanislaw Lem
Opinions are personal; facts are suspect; I speak for myself only
-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no
spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil
influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for
they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and
perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and
under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved
up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one
didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just
fine.... --Stanislaw Lem