Collegiate Times

If you feel like that group project is making you think sluggishly, you just might be right.

A new study by the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute shows that group work can have negative effects on astuteness in certain settings by inhibiting expressions of intelligence.

“What our research has done is highlight the ranking process associated with the emotional signal that may undermine high-performing individuals’ expressions of intelligence,” said Kenneth Kishida, lead author of the study.

The study found that multiple brain regions — including the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens, which are related to emotional processing, problem solving, and rewards and pleasure, respectively — responded to social activity during the study. However, it is not conclusive that the social activity causes decreased brain activity in other areas. In addition, the study discovered a gender gap, as fewer women with comparable baseline IQ scores fell into the high-performing category.

Lori Stallard, a freshman Spanish major, has felt less productive in group settings.

“I feel like one person usually does all the work because they don’t want to fail, so they take on all the work,” she said. “(When that happens,) I feel like they think I’m stupid, that I’m not contributing enough. So I sit there and let them do all the work. Yeah, I think group settings can have a negative effect.”

While he said he does not know whether the results translate into real-world settings, Kishida said the study definitely illuminates some concerns over the negative effects of group settings.

“These kinds of group structures can have dramatic effects on people’s performance,” Kishida said.

Group work is a large part of curriculums in college courses, and Kishida said that, although no research confirms any methods of mitigating the effects of group settings, this study can help group project leaders strategize about how to best structure a group setting.

“Our study says that some individuals are harmed by being in an implicitly competitive group,” Kishida said. “Being in these competitive groups is not good for everybody; some people are harmed. But people can start to think about the effects that groups have on individual performance in groups.”

One potential way to minimize intelligence-inhibiting factors is to decrease or eliminate inter-group competition, Kishida said. In addition, he said studies like this one can help scientists and group leaders better understand how to execute effective group strategies.

“These kinds of studies where we’re taking brain measurement and looking at group dynamics in a measured, objective way is a totally different thing,” Kishida said. “When you see the scientific approach and the biological process behind it, you can really start to process a better understanding of these social processes we engage in every day.”

In the study, individuals took IQ tests and were placed into groups with similar scores. The groups then performed group work, such as cognitive problem-solving tasks.

During the process, researchers asked them questions to match a standardized test created by the researchers. This test was used to measure intelligence. To make the groups competitive, the researchers told the group how each individual was doing on the test.

Once the group work was finished, the individuals were placed in new groups. The new groups were based on whether their cognitive ability increased or decreased throughout the group work, and they were called “high-performing” and “low-performing” groups. Once identified, two of every five subjects in each group had their brains scanned to examine the biological processes that result from social interaction in groups.

“That’s the basic signal that was shared and tied the groups together – answering the same questions at the same time and receiving feedback about how they were doing in this implicitly competitive environment,” Kishida said.

“Being in these competitive groups is not good for everybody; some people are harmed. But people can start to think about the effects that groups have on individual performance in groups.”

One potential way to minimize intelligence-inhibiting factors is to decrease or eliminate inter-group competition, Kishida said. In addition, he said studies like this one can help scientists and group leaders better understand how to execute effective group strategies.

“These kinds of studies where we’re taking brain measurement and looking at group dynamics in a measured, objective way is a totally different thing,” Kishida said. “When you see the scientific approach and the biological process behind it, you can really start to process a better understanding of these social processes we engage in every day.”

In the study, individuals took IQ tests and were placed into groups with similar scores. The groups then performed group work, such as cognitive problem-solving tasks.

During the process, researchers asked them questions to match a standardized test created by the researchers. This test was used to measure intelligence. To make the groups competitive, the researchers told the group how each individual was doing on the test.

Once the group work was finished, the individuals were placed in new groups. The new groups were based on whether their cognitive ability increased or decreased throughout the group work, and they were called “high-performing” and “low-performing”
groups. 

Once identified, two of every five subjects in each group had their brains scanned to examine the biological processes that result from social interaction in groups.

“That’s the basic signal that was shared and tied the groups together — answering the same questions at the same time and receiving feedback about how they were doing in this implicitly competitive environment,” Kishida
said.

A version of this article appeared in the Mar 28 issue of the Collegiate Times.