Learn about a key trait in group leaders; why DNA evidence is overrated; and a brainless slime mold that can “think.” The "babble hypothesis" of leadership says people who talk more are seen as leaders by Steffie Drucker Dolan, E. W. (2021, July 17). New study finds people who speak more are more likely to be viewed as leaders. PsyPost; PsyPost. https://www.psypost.org/2021/07/new-study-finds-people-who-speak-more-are-more-likely-to-be-viewed-as-leaders-61540 MacLaren, N. G., Yammarino, F. J., Dionne, S. D., Sayama, H., Mumford, M. D., Connelly, S., Martin, R. W., Mulhearn, T. J., Todd, E. M., Kulkarni, A., Cao, Y., & Ruark, G. A. (2020). Testing the babble hypothesis: Speaking time predicts leader emergence in small groups. The Leadership Quarterly, 31(5), 101409. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101409 Contrary To Popular Belief, DNA Evidence Is Far From Perfect by Ashley Hamer Shermer, M. (2015). Forensic Pseudoscience. Scientific American, 313(3), 95–95. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0915-95 Shaer, M. (2016, May 17). The Atlantic. The Atlantic; theatlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/a-reasonable-doubt/480747/ Dolan, M. (2019, January 29). The danger of DNA: It isn’t perfect. Chicagotribune.com; Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/la-me-dna26-2008dec26-story.html There's a brainless slime mold that can do things often associated with thinking by Cameron Duke Greenberg, A. (2020, September 21). Eight smart things slime molds can do without a brain. Pbs.org; Nova. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/slime-mold-smart-brainless-cognition/ Murugan, N. J., Kaltman, D. H., Jin, P. H., Chien, M., Martinez, R., Nguyen, C. Q., Kane, A., Novak, R., Ingber, D. E., & Levin, M. (2021). Mechanosensation Mediates Long‐Range Spatial Decision‐Making in an Aneural Organism. Advanced Materials, 2008161. https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202008161 Thinking without a brain. (2021, July 15). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/762793 Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about a key trait in group leaders; why DNA evidence is overrated; and a brainless slime mold that can “think.”
The "babble hypothesis" of leadership says people who talk more are seen as leaders by Steffie Drucker
Contrary To Popular Belief, DNA Evidence Is Far From Perfect by Ashley Hamer
There's a brainless slime mold that can do things often associated with thinking by Cameron Duke
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/talkers-are-leaders-dna-evidence-myth-thinking-sans-brain
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why people who talk more are seen as leaders; why DNA evidence is far from perfect; and an organism that can do things we associate with thinking — even though it doesn’t have a brain.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
In the musical Hamilton, Aaron Burr advises Alexander Hamilton to “talk less, smile more.” But a new study from The Leadership Quarterly explains why that’s bad advice for power-hungry folks like Hamilton: when it comes to leading a group, your best bet might be to talk more.
It might seem obvious that you have to talk if you want to be a leader. But starting in the 1950s, some researchers started to wonder: does it matter what a leader actually talks about? And that brings us to the so-called “babble hypothesis” of leadership. It says “no” — when it comes to leadership, it’s only about the quantity of the words, not the quality. Interesting hypothesis, but even after numerous studies looking into it, researchers didn’t have an answer on whether it’s true. So researchers from Binghamton University and the University of Oklahoma decided to settle this once and for all.
And to do that, they turned to the perfect way to learn about leadership: a group project. The team assembled 33 groups of college students to work through a computer simulation, where they either had to execute a military mission or develop a clean-energy startup. Each group had between four and 10 members. They got 10 minutes to plan how they’d tackle the challenge and then 60 minutes to attempt it as a team. One group member was randomly chosen to operate the game’s controls during the simulation. But importantly, nobody was assigned to be the group’s leader. After the planning phase and then again after the gameplay, each person was asked to name up to five of their teammates who had emerged as leaders.
Now, there are a LOT of traits that you might expect to be traits of a true leader: experience, intelligence, extraversion, even proven successes. But these researchers found that not much of that mattered. Who commanded the controls didn’t even make much of a difference. The one defining factor was how much time each person spent talking. Those who talked more were more likely to be recognized as leaders.
Quantity totally outweighed quality in this scenario. The researchers say it could be that the amount of speaking time matters because it’s connected to other important behaviors, like portraying confidence.
One thing was clear, however: Gender was a key factor. Female group members got less speaking time and fewer leadership votes. The analysis found that all male group members got an extra vote just because of their gender, and that effect was magnified for the person who got the most votes.
So now that you know this, be sure to speak up if you want to step up to a leadership position. And guys, be good teammates by sharing the mic.
In any detective show, you know that when there’s DNA on the murder weapon, the cops are certain to find their killer. But in the real world, this level of scientific certainty is just as fictional as the show’s plot. DNA is hardly the airtight evidence most people think it is.
There is, unfortunately, a lot of junk science in the field of forensics — just look at polygraph tests, for starters. But DNA analysis has always been held up as unassailable. It was conceived in 1984 by British geneticist Alec Jeffreys, who stumbled upon it when he was researching genetic sequencing. Soon, he used his technique to help nearby police crack two unsolved murder cases. That made his technique front-page news around the world. It wasn’t long before DNA typing was an essential part of the criminal justice system. But at the same time the technique was gaining in popularity, it was losing its precision.
Here’s why: Alec Jeffreys’ technique only worked when you compared one large sample of DNA to another large sample of DNA — say, to determine whether a pool of blood found at the crime scene came from a particular suspect. As the science progressed, labs could use smaller samples and mixtures that included DNA from multiple people. That was handy for law enforcement, but it made the job of scientists a lot tougher.
See, humans have 99.9 percent of their genes in common, so it’s that last 0.1 percent that geneticists look for in DNA analysis. Specifically, there are certain pairs of genes, or alleles, that vary from person to person; the most accurate way to identify whether DNA came from a certain person is to compare samples at as many locations as possible.
But when there are tiny samples, degraded DNA, or mixtures, it’s not that simple. You have to decide: how many people’s DNA are involved, which alleles belong to which person, and whether alleles have disappeared. Suddenly, interpretation comes into play, and that’s where things can go very wrong.
Like, for one study, 17 lab technicians were asked to re-analyze a DNA sample. Unbeknownst to them, this sample came from a trial where the defendant was found guilty. Only one of the 17 decided that the defendant was guilty — the rest determined that the DNA either didn’t belong to the defendant or was inconclusive.
his isn’t to say that DNA is useless. In trained, competent hands, DNA analysis can be incredibly valuable. But many juries and courtrooms see it as scientific perfection, and it is anything but. Remember this the next time you watch your favorite crime show, because it’s a good reminder: don’t believe everything you see on TV.
Does thinking really require a brain? It seems like a simple question with a simple answer. Of course you need a brain to think, right? Well, slime molds might beg to differ. They can navigate mazes without so much as a neuron. But do they think?
Slime molds are amazing creatures. They are totally alien to us, too. Slime molds come from a different evolutionary branch than plants, animals, and fungi. And from the look of these oozing, pulsing creatures, it’s easy to see that. Some slime molds are made up of individual cells that work together, while others are pretty much one giant cell with a ton of nuclei. Some can even grow to be several feet long.
Slime molds can be found attached to logs and leaves like moss and lichen can, but that’s where the similarities end. Unlike moss and lichen, slime molds crawl. They grow, explore, and yes, think. At least, they do things that seem to require thinking, and scientists aren’t totally sure how exactly they do that without, you know… an actual brain.
Scientists have placed slime molds in mazes, with a food reward at both the entrance and exit. From the entrance, the slime mold can extend a tendril out to explore the maze, and eventually connect the entrance with the exit. In a more complex experiment, a researcher arranged little piles of oat flakes around the slime mold as if the slime mold were Tokyo and the piles were the map locations of surrounding towns. The slime mold stretched out its tendrils to those towns in a way that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Tokyo rail network.
Let me reiterate: the slime mold does all of this without a brain.
Scientists still don’t know exactly how slime molds make these decisions, but it’s clear that they are able to use environmental cues to control their growth patterns, and by extension, their movement. But it's more than a simple stimulus-response type of reaction. Recent experiments have shown that slime molds make choices about which direction they should move when offered options of differing quality. First, they grow in all directions in an apparent effort to “sample” the environment. But when they detect something that might be interesting, they begin to move toward it, often ignoring the option that wasn’t as good.
This is incredibly complex behavior for something that doesn’t think, at least the way we do. Scientists are actively trying to better understand how slime molds make such complex decisions. Brains. Who needs ‘em?
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Steffie Drucker and Cameron Duke.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!