Gender and Groupthink: Why Don't Smart People Share Their Ideas?

As the cliche goes, we are social animals. We eat in groups; we learn in groups; some of us hunt in groups. And very often, we make lots of big decisions in groups---from corporate boards to faculty committees and elected bodies.

But in those groups, do the best ideas always get adopted? Do they even get contributed to the mix?

What's particularly tough is when good ideas from half of the people in all groups are immediately ruled out. As research by Katherine Phillips and Melissa Thomas-Hunt explored back in 2004, groups across cultures have difficulty recognizing, let alone encouraging female expertise. This is often due to their group dynamics---whether the effects of social networks, group think, or even plain sexism.

But in last week’s WAPPP seminar on “Gender and Group Decisions: Eliciting and Acting Upon Expertise,” Katie Baldiga Coffman, Assistant Professor at Ohio State University, showed how, even in the absence of explicit group dynamics, women are less likely to put their own--often better--ideas forward.

In a controlled experiment at Ohio State, women and men offered their answers in a trivia game--first as individuals, later in blind groups, and finally in groups in which they saw their partners’ faces.

The results? Men contributed their answers more often than women, across categories; women under-contributed even in the subjects in which they were more comfortable about their expertise; and interestingly, even being provided feedback about their strengths did not improve efficiencies in information sharing.

So, even without competition, and with encouragement, talented women were less likely to contribute their better ideas to a group.

How can we fix this to improve efficiencies and make sure that (i) women are more comfortable with contributing their ideas, and that (ii) smart people contribute their good ideas more often? Can we design mechanisms or shape environments that “nudge” people to share and decide according to merit?

Taking a tip from the nudging process from last week's seminar, what would happen if we change the role models that women see--rather than just provide personal feedback--so people get more used to seeing women being successful, and start to associate women with success too? When people start getting used to seeing things a certain way, will they start getting used to doing them--including sharing and adopting the best ideas?

What are some other ways of nudging a system towards the best answers---towards social equity and social efficiency?



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If you can’t change the player, change the game

How many times have you heard people try to deny that they are prejudiced by saying that “some of my best friends are” black, gay, Republican, or women? I’ll bet it’s all too often.

Try as we might, most of us have some kind of latent bias that keeps us from being completely objective, even when we really want to be. Of course, too many of us are also pretty openly prejudiced. Both of these views get in the way of two things: equity and efficiency.

By equity, I mean that women in particular are underrepresented in most places of power---corporate boards, elected office, etc---in proportion to their population. By efficiency, I mean that there are tangible economic benefits to including different people, and women in particular, in decision-making.

According to Professor Iris Bohnet, Director of WAPPP and Academic dean at the Kennedy School, who presented her work on “Gender and Decision-Making” this week, women’s smaller appetites for risk-taking, more tempered competitiveness, and complementary perspectives may account for these contributions.

So how do we overcome these unintended biases and maximize these benefits?

One answer may lie in understanding and fixing “evaluation bias”. We often assess things based on factors completely unrelated to the thing itself. Our evaluations are often driven by the context around the subject, or our other assumptions or preconceived notions.

The Chubb Illusion: We think the center squares are different colors because of their surroundings
http://www.optical-illusion-pictures.com/famous.html 

For example, in many Indian villages people didn’t typically associate ‘leadership’ with women largely because they had rarely seen female leaders. But in 1993, women were required by a constitutional amendment to serve as the head of village councils, or Panchayat Raj, in one-third of all Indian villages---a change that familiarized the electorate with female leadership, and paved the way for further elections of women. (In 2011, 50% of all seats had to be filled by women).

This legislative change was a “nudge” in the right direction. By changing the context a little bit, people’s perceptions changed a little bit too. So if we adjust the process of hiring in different firms so that, for instance, candidates are referred to as “people” rather than as a “man” or “woman,” decision-makers might not be primed by their gender-based association, and instead choose based on merits alone. Similarly, if a school has to hire 5 professors in a year, it makes sense to hire them all at once, so any gender imbalances are immediately obvious when they’re seen in a single group---rather than letting gender slip past the radar in one-off hirings.

To tweak a phrase used by the rapper Ice T, if we can’t change the player, change the game. 

Collective recruitment limits discrimination in hiring

By Julie Battilana, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School
Originally published in French in Le Monde

February 11, 2013

If the last decade was marked by the willingness of businesses to fight discrimination against women and ethnic minorities, both in hiring and promotions, it should be noted that good intentions haven’t always been followed by results. In fact, far from it.

Among active women in France, only 6% occupy top managerial positions, the same proportion as... 1995. As for ethnic minorities, although the collection of statistics concerning them is not allowed by law, an examination of the French leading class is enough to note their poor representation.
To end discrimination, stereotypes must be eliminated. Yet, these die hard, as a recent study conducted by three researchers at Havard University ("When Performance Trumps Gender Bias : Joint versus Separate Evaluation" working paper published on Social Science Research Network, www.ssrn.com) reveals.

Wanting to better understand hiring and promotion decisions, Iris Bohnet, Max Bazerman and Alexandra van Geen conducted a series of experiments, the results of which suggest a direction for effectively fighting discrimination.

Neutralizing Predjudices

Among the 654 participants in their study, which included men and women, some took on the role of employers and others that of potential employees.

The latter completed a task that tested their aptitude in mathematics. Their performance levels were, afterwards, communicated to employers so that they may choose an employee who would perform this task once more, this time to the employer’s benefit.

The results showed that employers had a negative bias against female candidates when their performances were presented individually and independently from other candidates.

Male candidates whose scores were slightly inferior to the average were selected, while female candidates whose scores were at the average were not. The stereotype according to which women would be less competent than men in mathematical tasks thus heavily skewed employer’s decisions.

Avoiding Selecting Candidates One After the Other

Interestingly, a simple manipulation allowed to do away with this bias: when the performances of female candidates were presented not individually, but at the same time as those of their male counterparts, those with performance levels greater than the other candidates were selected.

To effectively fight against discrimination, businesses should thus avoid selecting candidates one after the other, and instead use a collective method. This approach is being used more and more in recruiting, but it is less widespread in promotion decisions.

This approach is, however, essential because it forces decision makers to rely on the comparative analysis of objective information, which neutralizes prejudices. It is time, for all private and public organizations, to recognize the importance, still today, of these prejudices and to act on them.


Translated from French by the author.