WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER: In Groups, Women Boost Collective Intelligence More Than Men

Having ladies take part in a group boosts the group’s collective intelligence – more than having men in the group does.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers looked at 22 studies; and found that individual skill, group gender composition, and group collaboration were all predictors of collective intelligence, or the ability of a group to work together and solve a range of problems of varying complexity.

Specifically, social perceptiveness of individual members, group composition, and group size were impactful.

They also found that group collaborations were about twice as important for predicting collective intelligence than individual skill; and that group composition (including the proportion of women in a group and group member social perceptiveness) were strong predictors of collective intelligence.

Study co-author, Anita Woolley, says they continue to find that having more women in the group raises the overall level of collective intelligence, regardless of whether the collaboration is face-to-face or online.