Meetings don't just eat up time in the workplace, they actually make groups of people stupider, says new research.

研究：开会让人变蠢
Brainstorming? More like brain drain

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?'

(Read by Nelly Min. Nelly Min is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)
 

新研究发现，会议不单会耗费大量工作时间，实际上还会使团队成员都变蠢。

团队工作使人们在智力测试中表现更糟糕，因为有些团队成员太急于表现，花太多心思去维护自己在团队中的地位，分散了脑力。

该研究的领头人、弗吉尼亚理工大学的瑞德•蒙塔古说，“你也许会开玩笑说委员会会议让你有脑死亡的感觉，但是我们的研究发现，它还会让你表现得像个脑残。”

志愿者们被邀请一起做智力测试，并在团队中公布结果。结果显示，多组志愿者的智力水平显著下降。

有些人在群体测试中表现得很好，但其他人则严重受影响——总体上成绩下降了。

女性感受到的压力似乎比男性更大——13个女性志愿者中，只有3个人在群体环境中表现良好，其他的10个人发现自己的成绩下降了。

研究者使用磁共振成像扫描仪来监控人们的大脑做出的反应，结果发现得分偏低者大脑中处理情绪和焦虑的区域有活动迹象。

蒙塔古说：“我们从智力相当的个人着手，把他们分到不同小组，然后按照完成任务的表现排名并公布。我们发现其中一些人解决问题的能力大大下降。”

该研究的主要作者肯尼斯•岸田说：“我们的研究明确指出，在团体背景下，即使细微的社会信号也会对个人产生意料之外的重大影响。”

“我们不知道真实世界中这些影响有多少。例如过分强调竞争是否会让我们因此失去很大一部分人才资源？”