Study of the Day: When Teamwork Isn’t Democratic, Everyone Benefits

The Atlantic:

PROBLEM: Though many believe that equality within a team is important, does this flat power structure really improve a group’s performance?

METHODOLOGY: Researchers led by Richard Ronay randomly assigned 138 undergraduate students to one of three experimental conditions — primed to feel high in power, low in power, and baseline or control. They organized subjects into same-sex teams of three high-power participants and three low-power participants or groups with one high-power, one low-power, and one baseline participant. They then measured the teams’ performance in a task that required group interdependence wherein each member was required to make words from 16 letters and then work as a group to combine the words into as many sentences as possible. They also measured how the groups fared on a second task that did not require subjects to coordinate their efforts.

Read the whole story: The Atlantic