The results of a study reported in the journal of the Association for Psychological Science, revealed that a gender bias occurred when selecting leaders in various group scenarios. Females were more often chosen as leaders of the intragroup condition while males were preferred to lead intergroup situations. In addition, females were also viewed as being more effective than males in maintaining intragroup relationships.

The authors suggest that these findings are the result of the way our society has evolved. For example, men have traditionally been more involved in combat and war (i.e. intergroup conflict) than women—successful male warriors were held in high status in many societies.

That females were selected as leaders in the intragroup conditions and were also viewed as being more effective in maintaining positive relationships within the group may reflect females’ traditional roles as peacekeepers and wanting to preserve group order. The authors reason, “Such engendered leadership prototypes are a residual of human evolutionary history that still affects the way people evaluate and respond to leadership in society today.”

However, it is interesting to note that these leadership prototypes may have been in place prior to human evolution. Chimpanzees (our nearest relatives) also exhibit similar gendered leadership standards—the males are in charge of patrolling group boundaries and the females maintain the peace within their group.

From Science Daily

A fun article in Science Daily showed how a minor change in the room’s smell increased both fairness and charitableness. “People are unconsciously fairer and more generous when they are in clean-smelling environments, according to a soon-to-be published study led by a Brigham Young University professor.”

Right now, “Companies often employ heavy-handed interventions to regulate conduct, but they can be costly or oppressive,” says one of the researchers involved in the study. With these findings, better results could be achieved for less than $10 and in less than 10 minutes.Thanks to Eric Drexler for pointing this one out

We’ve touched on this subject before: that anytime part of your mind is busy resisting something, or condemning something— that it’s the wrong setting; that the interaction is not going the way you’d like, or that you’re not feeling the way you’d like– anytime part of your mind is  engaged struggling against something; then by definition, your whole mind is not fully present.

When this happens, it will be picked up by the people you’re interacting with. One sign is that your facial reactions will be a split-second delayed; which they will pick up on a subconscious level, and you’ll come across as inauthentic. The second cost is that struggling prevents you from being fully emotionally present, which is the only way to achieve deep rapport.

So— how does one get out of this trap? Let’s say you’re meeting someone with whom you’d really like to achieve a good rapport. If you’re busy  thinking that there’s not good enough rapport right now, the interaction isn’t going well enough, etc— that struggle is preventing the very rapport you’re hoping to achieve! So the first thing to give the rapport any space to blossom, is to stop struggling. Accept the situation as it is— let everything be as it is. How the interaction is going; how you’re behaving; whatever you may be thinking and feeling. Everything, everything, everything. Relax into the interaction. Be fully present.

This takes practice— and discipline. But the rewards are very, very worth it.

A recent WSJ article, describing the impostor syndrome, was a welcome voice in bringing the issue to light. On the other hand, when making recommendations to resolve the issue, the article presented tools from cognitive behavioral therapy. These, essentially, try to silence the impostor syndrome by arguing with it, by entering the battle and win it.

Unfortunately, recent cognitive science has shown time and time again that this doesn’t work: when you try to argue with the internal critic, you get locked into a struggle that you shouldn’t even be in. One of the leading experts in this field, Stephen Hayes, phrases things this way: trying to win the battle is doomed to failure– you’ll just get locked into the fight, a constant war zone inside your head. Instead, you should leave the battlefield entirely.

What does this mean concretely? You can’t loosen the mind’s grip on you by using it! And you are more than your thinking mind. Though this may sound odd, it is possible to just be, without thinking; to drop below the thinking mind. You have to learn how to get out of the mind in order to loosen its grip on you.

As Einstein put it, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”