This week we look at lying in group dynamics and how stories highlight the power of exposure and representation.

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Research Roundup

Collective Noun for Liars

No one wants to be accused of lying, but dishonesty has many paths for creeping into our lives.

Group effects can even turn honest individuals into knowing liars. For example, otherwise honest people are more likely to lie as part of a larger group than by themselves or in a small group. Also, “all-male groups stand out in their proclivity to lie”, with “the first female in a group [causing] an honesty shift”. This aligns with my own research on the neuroscience of trust: highly homogeneous groups are often “dumber” than their individual members.

These questions of honesty go beyond individuals and small groups. Companies must be better “citizens” as well. Mainstream "advertising on websites that publish misinformation is pervasive for companies across several industries”.  While “most decision-makers are unaware that their companies’ advertising appears on misinformation websites”, those that are “increase their demand for a platform-based solution to reduce monetizing misinformation”. While there are technological tools for reducing lies online, companies must become informed and choose to act, for their own interest if no one else’s.

I have a large collection of research on the topic of honesty and courage that I’ve pulled together for my future book Small Sacrifices. What is clear is that neither of these qualities come easily to anyone; they demand effortful practice.

Fictive Futures

When new parents tell me about how they raised their kids without gender bias but their daughter “just loves dolls”, I often wonder what Skinnerian isolation chamber they have condemned their child to for this cruel experiment. While there are absolutely population-level differences between boys and girls, separating biology from culture is nearly impossible given the innumerable pathways by which culture exposes us to stereotypes, negative and positive.

A computational analysis of literature reveals that “female characters are more likely to be passive in cross-gender relationships”. This “gender agency gap” has “declined since the 19th century but persists into the 21st”. Unsurprisingly, “male authors are especially likely to attribute less agency to female characters.” But across all stories “certain kinds of actions, especially physical and villainous ones, have more pronounced gender disparities”.

Another set of stories are told in the courses we take in school. Many young women took “home economics programs during the early 20th century”, which “introduced a generation of women to some scientific fields, but not others.” Any analysis of these patterns reveals that “a 10 percentage point increase in the share of women majoring in home economics is associated with a roughly 3 percentage point increase in the share of women majoring in science”. The analysis provides causal evidence to partly explain why women “make up a large share of majors in biology, chemistry, and related fields, but only a small share of physics and engineering majors.” It is cultural exposure rather than genetics.

Further, a separate “randomized controlled trial” with students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds found that those exposed to elite “STEM summer programs are more likely to enroll in, persist through, and graduate from college”. These programs “increase…four-year graduation with a STEM degree attainment by 33%” and lift “potential earnings by 2-6%.”

Yes we are our genes. We are also the stories we tell ourselves and the friends we keep. We are messy but our potential is within our collective grasp.

Weekly Indulgence

Check out the talk I gave in Boston last month at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools…

Stage & Screen

• August 23, virtual: more fun with BCG 😄
• September 8, Athens: ESOMAR
• September 25, SF: BCG Australia
• September 26, Wyoming: Tetons Leadership Counsel
• September 27, NYC: well...the teaser is right above this.

Upcoming this Fall (tentative)

• October 1-4, Singapore: Hyper Island and more! (Book me!!!)
• October 9-10, NYC: 2 events in one–I'm back at the UN speaking at GlobalMindED and then receiving StartOut's Trailblazer Award
• October 23, Toronto: Let's spend the day together at Metropolitan University's Future of Work conference
• October 28-30, Rome: Are you as shocked as I that this is my first ever visit to Italy? I'll be talking AI and Humans for the UN.

Find more upcoming talks, interviews, and other events on my Events Page.

If your company, university, or conference just happen to be in one of the above locations and want the "best keynote I've ever heard" (shockingly spoken by multiple audiences last year)?

SciFi, Fantasy, & Me

After enjoying a new author I always explore their other work. So after following on my recommendation of Stuart Turton’s The Last Murder at the End of the World, I can now recommend his previou novel, The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It is a timey-wimey take on Agetha Christie, Primer meets Five Little Pigs, with a big dose of Quantum Leap. (Don’t be surprised if Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water pops up here in a few weeks.)

Vivienne L'Ecuyer Ming