Feminist Writer in The Atlantic argues that men have "emotional illiteracy", women have innate cognitive advantages in working in groups, and women ought to earn more than men in the future.

SporkTornado · 2015-01-20T00:24:12+00:00

Bet they'd flip out if someone had an article that talked about how women are too emotional and lack the logical capabilities to compete with men in the business world.

SporkTornado · 2015-01-19T21:03:53+00:00

Feminist claim society values men over women.

If you claim women are smarter than men, you get a round of applause.

If you claim that men are smarter than women, you get called a misogynist. Hell, if you claim men are better than women at anything at all, people tend to start losing their shit.

Makes me wonder who society actually values more.

Sasha_ · 2015-01-19T21:12:22+00:00

Well, whover wrote this has obviously never worked with women, because as a group they usually creat absolute carnage with bullying and bitching running rampant. And as for men's ability to work as a group - has she never seen a submarine or a building-site? Men work together in groups are the time - and usually brilliantly well. Her, we've managed to construct the entire modern world. Can you imagine a group of women building the Brooklyn Bridge, or building a spaceship to land on a comet? Her, they couldn't even do the latter without making a fucking fuse about someone's shirt.

MonkeyCB · 2015-01-19T21:57:52+00:00

If women are so intelligent, so much better at working in groups, and have so many advantages over me, why is it that they can't start successful businesses on their own? Especially now that they have government aid to do just that. It's always "we need women to be included into x system", never "we're going to build our own for women".

iNQpsMMlzAR9 · 2015-01-20T06:21:18+00:00

The Secret to Smart Groups Isn't Smart People—It's Women

I wonder if the author's aware of what they implied here.

Claude_Reborn · 2015-01-19T22:28:27+00:00

Oh for gods sake.

men are not "emotionally illiterate" we just don't bring drama and bullshit into our work life. We actually have a leash on our emotions and can turn them down when needs be.

I have worked in offices full of women and the sheer amount of gossip, drama and bullshit blew my mind. How the fuck these women managed to get anything done in a day was beyond me.

Moved to an almost all male job and everything gets done and there is zero gossiping and bullshit.

As an introvert, all female workplaces wear me down because of the constant forced interactions and gossiping that takes place. You can't avoid it. If you put your headphones on and try and get some work done you constantly get tapped on the shoulder about something, which ends up being gossip sooner or later.

I just want to go in, get the work done and go out and enjoy life. Work is no an extension of my social life, as it seems to be for 90% of women.

2015-01-20T00:15:17+00:00

Baumeister: is there anything good about men?

The gist of our view was that there are two different ways of being social. In social psychology we tend to emphasize close, intimate relationships, and yes, perhaps women specialize in those and are better at them than men. But one can also look at being social in terms of having larger networks of shallower relationships, and on these, perhaps, men are more social than women.

CarbonBlob78 · 2015-01-19T22:20:39+00:00

Feminist writer - who happens to be a man.

So by feminism's own logic his own opinions are invalidated because of his sex, right?

And that being the case, he is proving feminism right, but since he's male, feminism is in fact bunk.

Damn my head hurts...

paracog · 2015-01-19T23:36:37+00:00

Exchange "men" for any ethnic or sexual identity and you would have pure bigotry, but it's ok to say about men.

Wargame4life · 2015-01-20T00:55:35+00:00

Ah yes the quantifiable easily objective metric of "emotional literacy".

his opinion is so piss poor retarded it qualifies as mental illness

Corn-Tortilla · 2015-01-19T22:59:17+00:00

That's nice that you can read minds luv, but I don't need a mind reader on my team. I need people that are willing and capable of doing what I ask them to do. If you can do that, great. If not, take your wonderful mind reading skills and go find yourself another team to work with, because you're useless to me.

That is all.

iainmf · 2015-01-19T23:20:05+00:00

This is the study the article is based on.

Finally, c was positively and significantly correlated with the proportion of females in the group (r = 0.23, P = 0.007). However, this result appears to be largely mediated by social sensitivity (Sobelz = 1.93, P = 0.03), because (consistent with previous research) women in our sample scored better on the social sensitivity measure than men [t(441) = 3.42, P = 0.001]. In a regression analysis with the groups for which all three variables (social sensitivity, speaking turn variance, and percent female) were available, all had similar predictive power for c, although only social sensitivity reached statistical significance (b = 0.33, P = 0.05) (12).

Can someone explain this in lay terms please?

jhenry922 · 2015-01-20T05:50:30+00:00

My wife, working in the drama of a mostly female office can't wait to come home to me where she can have her arguments listened too, not dismissed; concerns are dealt with logic and not scorn/ridicule

xNOM · 2015-01-20T12:01:22+00:00

LOL The SJWs at the NYT really latched onto this one. They saw the phrase "group intelligence" and went nuts. They have no idea what it means. "Intelligent groups" are good at planning a shopping trip, or thinking up as many uses for a brick as possible, for example. From the paper, I think the best way of thinking about "group intelligence" is "avoidance of the normal tendency for groups to act more stupidly than the people in them." It is a measure of communication and diversity of opinions more than anything else.

Here is the original paper:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6004/686

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6004/686/suppl/DC1

the test subjects were recruited "from the general public in the Boston area via internet advertising" They were paid. i.e. not a random sample at all
the definition of "group intelligence" is extrapolated from the definition of "general cognitive ability" g used for individuals, as correlation among scores on diverse performance tasks. Except here are the the "group tasks" from the paper's supplemental materials:

Tasks and Measures

Individual intelligence test. Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM) is a standardized test of general fluid reasoning capacity. Participants were given 10 minutes to complete half of the 36-item Raven’s II test (all of the odd-numbered items). Each item presents a 3 x 3 array (or “matrix”) of shapes with the lower-right corner empty. Based on patterns in the sequences of shapes, subjects must pick which of 8 other shapes properly belongs in the empty space. There is only one correct answer per question. Questions become progressively more difficult as the test goes on. Examples of items are available from Harcourt Education.

Group tasks. We selected tasks from the McGrath Task Circumplex (1), an established and validated taxonomy characterizing tasks according to the dominant coordination process required for its accomplishment by a group. The Taxonomy identifies four main types of tasks: (1) Quadrant I includes “Generate” tasks which include brainstorming tasks and anything involving the development of new ideas or information; (2) Quadrant II includes “Choose” tasks which involve deciding about issues that either have a correct answer or which are matters of judgment, with some research noting important distinctions among intellective and judgmental tasks (2); (3) Quadrant III includes “Negotiate” tasks which involve resolving conflicts of interest or points of view; and (4) Quadrant IV includes “Execute” tasks which involve performances and psycho-motor tasks. We included at least one task from each quadrant. The tasks are described below. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations of measures are shown in Table 1.

Brainstorming(Quadrant I). Groups spent 10 minutes brainstorming possible uses for a brick. Groups received one point for each non-redundant idea they generated, independent of quality of the ideas.

Group Matrix Reasoning (Quadrant II). Groups completed the even-numbered questions of RAPM questions as a group. Groups were scored on the number of items answered correctly.

Group Moral Reasoning (Quadrant II). Using the “Disciplinary Action Case” (3), groups decided on disciplinary actions in a fictitious case in which a college basketball player bribed an instructor to change his grade on an exam. The groups were given a list of five issues having to do with how to treat the athlete and the instructor. Issues included what to do about the student’s grade in the course and whether to suspend him from school. The groups' task was to select one choice from a list of alternatives provided for each issue. In addition, groups were told to take into account the conflicting interests of the faculty, college administration, and the athletic department when making their decisions. Responses were scored using a rubric that reflected the degree to which the groups considered the balance of competing perspectives on the problem.

Plan shopping trip (Quadrant III). The groups' task was to plan a shopping trip as if they were all residents of the same house sharing a single car. Each group member was given a different list of groceries they needed for the week, and various constraints applied. For instance, there were better and worse places to buy the different items, with cheaper and higher quality options requiring more driving time. Maps were provided with information on distances and time for reaching each store. Solutions were scored as follows: (a) each item purchased = +1 point, (b) bonus for high quality item = +1 point, (c) bonus for lower priced alternative = +2 points, (d) penalty for leaving frozen items in the car beyond 30 minutes = loss of all points for that item. The groups' goal was to work out a plan in which they could purchase as many highvalue items from each of their lists as possible and thus earn as many points as possible for their group.

Group typing (Quadrant IV). Groups were provided a hard copy of a complicated text and worked for 10 minutes to simultaneously type as much of the text as possible into a shared online document. Participants were each seated in front of a separate computer and worked in the shared online document where they could see each others' work with a slight delay. Teams earned one point for each word correctly typed, and lost one point for each word skipped and for each typo. Team members thus needed to carefully coordinate their work to avoid typing over the work of other members or skipping whole sections (which would result in the loss of many points).

Criterion task: Video checkers. Group members were seated together in front of a single computer to play checkers against a computerized opponent. Members were first familiarized with the game and the rules individually and given 5 minutes to talk about their strategy. Teams then played a practice match and then one test match against the computer opponent. Only the results of the test match were used for the analysis. Teams received one point for each move they made, two points for each piece captured, and 3 points for each king they earned.

wisty · 2015-01-20T01:22:23+00:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

ConfirmedCynic · 2015-01-20T04:16:17+00:00

Because, being in "tune" emotionally and talking about it incessantly is more important than just getting the job done?

weather3003 · 2015-01-20T10:33:11+00:00

So I read over the study, and from what I could tell it looked like the groups were together for only a few tasks. I feel like men may do better in long term situations with larger groups, where it is more important to not have conflict than to get along exceedingly well.

SigmundFloyd76 · 2015-01-20T13:13:38+00:00

Um, In my experience, as an enlightened logical intelligent human being, men tend to be more emotionally mature than woman, contrary to popular belief.

I don't think it was always this way, I feel things have deteriorated since feminism has taken accountability and true equality away from woman. I realize this is a potentially inflammatory position to take, but it isn't completely vacuous.

rbrockway · 2015-01-20T14:14:33+00:00

Feminists often tout as advantageous the tendency for women to seek consensus among their peers. There is evidence to support the claim that women are more likely to seek consensus.

If women seek consensus more than men then they must be less likely to advanced a dissenting opinions in a group. Dissenting opinions lead to evaluating a wider range of alternatives. Seeking consensus actually reduces the value of the group discussion itself.

Seeking consensus is the antithesis of diversity of opinion.

Gstreetshit · 2015-01-20T15:57:20+00:00

Clearly, as evidenced by all of the civilizations women have build from nothing.

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