Meetings don't just eat up time in the workplace, they actually make groups of people stupider, says new research。
Working in a group makes people perform worse on intelligence tests, as some group members are so anxious about doing well that they 'divert' their brain power towards maintaining their social status in the group。
'You may joke about how committee meetings make you feel brain dead, but our findings suggest that they may make you act brain dead as well,' said Read Montague the study leader at Virginia Tech。
Groups of volunteers showed measurable drops in IQ when asked to perform intelligence tests socially, with the results broadcast to the group。
Some people performed well in the 'social' tests, but others were affected badly - and overall, performance dropped。
Women appear to feel this pressure more than men - only three out of 13 female volunteers performed well in a social environment, with 10 out of 13 finding that their peformance dropped。
The researchers used a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner to monitor how people's brains responded - and found that bad peformers tended to show activity in parts of their brain that dealt with emotions and anxiety。
'We started with individuals who were matched for their IQ,' said Montague. 'Yet when we placed them in small groups, ranked their performance on tasks against their peers, and broadcast the rankings, we saw dramatic drops in the ability of some study subjects to solve problems.'
'Our study highlights the unexpected and dramatic consequences even subtle social signals in group settings may have on the individual,' said lead author Kenneth Kishida。
'We don't know how much these effects are present in real-world settings. By placing an emphasis on competition, for example, are we missing a large segment of the talent pool?'
新研究發現，會議不單會耗費大量工作時間，實際上還會使團隊成員都變蠢。
團隊工作使人們在智力測試中表現更糟糕，因為有些團隊成員太急於表現，花太多心思去維護自己在團隊中的地位，分散了腦力。
該研究的領頭人、弗吉尼亞理工大學的瑞德?蒙塔古說，“你也許會開玩笑說委員會會議讓你有腦死亡的感覺，但是我們的研究發現，它還會讓你表現得像個腦殘。”
志願者們被邀請一起做智力測試，並在團隊中公佈結果。結果顯示，多組志願者的智力水平顯著下降。
有些人在群體測試中表現得很好，但其他人則嚴重受影響——總體上成績下降了。
女性感受到的壓力似乎比男性更大——13個女性志願者中，只有3個人在群體環境中表現良好，其他的10個人發現自己的成績下降了。
研究者使用磁共振成像掃描器來監控人們的大腦做出的反應，結果發現得分偏低者大腦中處理情緒和焦慮的區域有活動跡象。
蒙塔古說：“我們從智力相當的個人著手，把他們分到不同小組，然後按照完成任務的表現排名並公佈。我們發現其中一些人解決問題的能力大大下降。”
該研究的主要作者肯尼斯?岸田說：“我們的研究明確指出，在團體背景下，即使細微的社會訊號也會對個人產生意料之外的重大影響。”
“我們不知道真實世界中這些影響有多少。例如過分強調競爭是否會讓我們因此失去很大一部分人才資源？”