If you lock a bunch of high-IQ people in a room and tell them to get on with a simple task, what will they emerge with? Lower IQs, for one thing. A study done by Virginia Tech and a few other institutions, written up over the winter in a publication of the Royal Society, tried to replicate how people think under social pressure. Subjects with an average IQ of 126 were clustered into problem-solving groups and exposed to judgments about their work. A pecking order formed. The low performers showed high responses in the part of the brain that regulates fear. Most of the men became “high performers”, most of the women “low performers”, but no one blossomed. The scientists concluded that “individuals express diminished cognitive capacity in small groups, an effect that is exacerbated by perceived lower status”. In other words, they get dumber.
如果你將一羣高智商的人鎖在一個房間裏，然後交給他們一個簡單的任務，那麼結果會怎樣呢？智商降低是結果之一。維吉尼亞理工學院(Virginia Tech)和其他幾個機構在冬季撰寫、最終發表在《皇家學會》(Royal Society)刊物上的一項研究，試圖探索人們在社會壓力下如何思考。平均智商爲126的研究對象，被分成解決問題的若干組，他們的工作受到評委的評判。於是一種強弱順序就形成了。表現較差者的大腦中控制擔憂情緒的部位反應非常活躍。大多數男性成爲表現較優者，大多數女性成爲表現較差者，但沒有真正表現出色的。於是科學家得出這樣的結論：「在小集體裏，個體的認知能力有所下降，而如果個體感覺地位下降，這種效應就更明顯。」換句話說，他們變蠢了。
