NBC
Confirmed: Meetings can make you stupid
“You may joke about how committee meetings make you feel brain dead, but our findings suggest that they may make you act brain dead as well,” says study co-author Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.
There’s a special social dynamic that occurs in meetings, Montague says, that can not only make us feel stupid, but also make us act that way. All it takes is a colleague who seems smarter than us when he/she does a presentation, says the study’s lead author Kenneth T. Kishida, a research scientist at the institute. That can make us feel stupid — and that can get in the way of how our brains process information.
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Just imagine how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of the population is even dumber than he is.
John the Libertarian on February 7, 2012 at 6:05 PM
Every liberal I’ve ever worked for looooooved meetings. They loved discussing “fixing” everything in great detail. They loved planning things that never actually worked. They rarely, if ever, went back and checked if things had worked. In fact, if a problem kept cropping up after they’d “fixed” it they’d just have another meeting to “tweak” their plan.
29Victor on February 7, 2012 at 6:06 PM
A little over 50% of people voted for Obama. I see what you mean.
angryed on February 7, 2012 at 6:07 PM
Well, that explains the OWS mob.
Chip on February 7, 2012 at 6:07 PM
Or, as the Demotivator says…
29Victor on February 7, 2012 at 6:07 PM
When I worked in social services… all the managers and directors ever seemed to do was have meetings. Meeting after meeting. They would literally have one meeting and end it to go to another meeting.
JellyToast on February 7, 2012 at 6:08 PM
When I worked in the corporate world I actually liked meetings. It was an hour to veg and daydream while getting paid. I made sure I said something early so that I would seem as if I were “contributing” than off to la-la land I went for the rest of the hour.
angryed on February 7, 2012 at 6:08 PM
How many meetings does Obama have per day?
WashJeff on February 7, 2012 at 6:09 PM
I wonder how many meetings were needed to come up with that name. Geezus.
angryed on February 7, 2012 at 6:10 PM
very few … he can’t afford to get any dumber than he already is. Explains why he’s reported to be a recluse.
Lost in Jersey on February 7, 2012 at 6:15 PM
“We’ve called this meeting to both summarize what we did in the last meeting as well as plan for the next meeting. I’ll start off but I have to leave early to attend another meeting on the other side of the building.”
Dack Thrombosis on February 7, 2012 at 6:22 PM
Anyone who has had to work within a Six Sigma framework should know this, especially if the members all have reached Black Belt status.
What a waste of time as all that meetings and endless certification collecting employees do is avoid taking responsibility.
Kermit on February 7, 2012 at 6:55 PM
One fellow who I worked with at a major manufacturing company would bring a banana into the meeting room with him and when it began to get “too deep” would start eating his banana in very suggestive ways. The meeting would immediately end and he was able to get back to doing something productive.
Kermit on February 7, 2012 at 7:01 PM
Reason #978 that entrepreneurship and freelance work are so satisfying.
I worked briefly in the corporate HQ of a large bank and was on a multi-department committee that was supposed to roll out a new product. The VPs’ meetings were so convoluted and non-productive that we hired a consulting firm to produce a training session on how to make decisions. The decision to hire a company to teach us how to make decisions went well. After that, committee meetings degraded to discussions of how to implement the decision-making techniques that we learned in training.
obladioblada on February 7, 2012 at 7:10 PM
Especially those where all agree.
Synergy is when all go under, together.
Schadenfreude on February 7, 2012 at 7:30 PM
” meetings can make you stupid”-from MSNBC.
I rest my case.
Dr. Carlo Lombardi on February 7, 2012 at 7:54 PM
Exactly. Same here. It was as if they believed that talking about how they wanted things to work would magically make them work the way they wanted. The plans themselves became the purpose of their employment, not the success of those plans.
I have a funny feeling this is how most of our government is run.
29Victor on February 7, 2012 at 7:57 PM
Those that can’t, meet.
I hate meetings.
I avoid them at all costs.
wildcat72 on February 7, 2012 at 8:32 PM