Recent research has suggested that women play better with others in small working groups, and that adding women to a group is a surefire（准不会有错的） way to boost team collaboration¹ and creativity. But a new study from Washington University in St. Louis finds that this is only true when women work on teams that aren't competing against each other. Force teams to go head to head and the benefits of a female approach evaporate.

 

"Intergroup competition is a double-edged sword that ultimately provides an advantage to groups and units composed predominantly or exclusively of men, while hurting the creativity of groups composed of women," said Markus Baer, PhD, lead author of the study and associate professor of organizational behavior at Olin Business School.

 

The study suggests that men benefit creatively from going head-to-head with other groups, while groups of women operate better in less competitive situations. As intergroup competition heats up, men become more creative and women less so.

 

"Women contributed less and less to the team's creative output when the competition between teams became cutthroat（残酷的）, and this fall-off was most pronounced in teams composed entirely² of women," Baer said.

 

The findings are counterintuitive because previous research has shown that women generally are more collaborative than men when working in teams.

 

"If teams work side by side, women tend to perform better and even outperform men -- they're more creative," Baer said.

 

"As soon as you add the element of competition though, the picture changes. Men under those circumstances gel together. They become more interdependent and more collaborative, and women just do the opposite.

 

"So, what is true for non-competitive circumstances, flips³ when it gets competitive," he said.

 

The study should serve as a caution to managers attempting to use competition among teams to spur creativity. It shows that intense competition can erase⁴ the creative advantage that women tend to enjoy over their male counterparts.

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