Where are the abducted girls?

There’s an old adage that behind every great man is a great(er) woman. It turns out that the same could be said for great teams. Evidence suggests that the number of women on a given team influences that team’s ability to solve complex problems.

The researchers, led by Anita Williams Wooley of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, were initially examining the concept of collective intelligence—the idea that effective groups tap into a separate intelligence that is different from merely the average of the individual intelligence of team members.

The team administered IQ tests to nearly 700 participants and then randomized them into groups of various sizes (between two and five members). Each of the 192 groups worked together on various tasks, ranging from negotiations to visual puzzles to complex problem-solving assignments. Almost all of the assignments required some element of creative thinking.

When running the numbers, the researchers found that there was little correlation between the average intelligence of a team and its performance on these tasks. In addition, group cohesion, motivation, and satisfaction weren’t correlated with collective intelligence. Most of the expected predictors of team performance failed to correlate with actual collective intelligence. When they dug deeper into what explained performance, however, they discovered a few surprising predictors.

The first was that groups that took turns more frequently in discussions tended to perform better. The teams that shared information more freely and kept one or two individuals from dominating the process scored better across the board.

The second was that higher performance was found in teams with higher social sensitivity—how much individual members paid attention to other members and asked questions instead of assuming opinions or compliance.

The final finding was that the more women on the team, the smarter it was.

The commonly held belief is that teams that are the most diverse tend to perform better. This research, however, implies the more women, the better. While the initial study wasn’t designed to examine any gender effects, the correlation between number of women and performance was significant and has since been replicated in two other studies.

One possible explanation is that the number of women is also predictive of the level of social sensitivity, the first predictor of team performance. In general, women on teams tend to ask questions more often and allow for a more collective discussion. Many studies show that women score more highly than men in social sensitivity.

Culled from Psychology Today

In what could be best described as every parent’s worst nightmare, some secondary school girls numbering about two hundred of Government Secondary School Chibok in Borno State were abducted by suspected Boko Haram militants on Monday night. They were writing their final examination of WAEC.

This was also the day of the horror of bomb blast in the morning at Nyanya, a suburb of Abuja where almost one hundred people died, though some believed it could be more than two hundred and many others injured.

According to reports, gunmen went to the school and took the girls away in many vehicles, including pick-up trucks.

With this brazen abduction of young innocent girls by the militants, something heinous has again been introduced into the insurgency.

The very thought of the girls in the hands of men makes one cringe. What is their fate, what are they going to do to them, how afraid the girls would be, thinking about their parents, are questions that nag the mind and refuse to go away.

However, few of the girls were able to escape along the road when one of the cars broke down.

One of the girls who narrated the ordeal to BBC Hausa said, “Upon seeing that, some girls close to the door dropped out of the car and ran into the bush. We also jumped out and followed them into the bush, where we stayed till morning before we headed back to our homes.”

The reality that the young girls JUMPED out of a vehicle, RAN into the BUSH, SPENT the NIGHT in the bush, underlines the gravity of the situation to make teenage girls to behave like that, in order to escape.

Other three girls were also said to return home later, but as for the rest, we hope the security agents would find them soonest, like YESTERDAY.

One of the fathers of the abducted girls, also told BBC Hausa the he would rather his daughter was dead than being abducted.

“I can’t quantify what I am feeling now, my mind would have been more comfortable if I had seen the dead body of my daughter,” he said.

He added that in order to find his daughter, he followed the route of the abductors and spent the night in the forest before coming back home. When he came back home he found his wife in coma.

The tale of woes are many from the parents and guardians, however other people also share in the pain and pray for the immediate release or rescue of the teenage girls.

The questions that baffles the mind is how the insurgents were able to drive many vehicles and abducted the girls without being intercepted by security agents, especially in a place that is under emergency rule.

This is national tragedy and an indictment of the government that nobody is really secure in Nigeria. I saw somebody who was solemn yesterday; he said the insecurity in the country has damped him, lamenting the abduction of the girls.

“We are on our own, nobody is safe. You cannot be sure of anything anymore,” he said dejectedly.

President Goodluck Jonathan should do something to bring the insecurity to an end. We need action rather than rhetoric of condemnation.

Wherever the girls are taken to, they should be found.