̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Alecia Carter

Women much less likely to ask questions in academic seminars than men

ta385 — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 18:01:00 +0000

Women are two and a half times less likely to ask a question in departmental seminars than men, an observational study of 250 events at 35 academic institutions in 10 countries has found.

This disparity exists despite the gender ratio at these seminars being, on average, equal. It also reflects significant differences in self-reported feelings towards speaking up.

̽��ֱ��research, led by a then Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, adds to a growing body of evidence showing that women are less visible than men in various scientific domains and helps to explain the “leaky pipeline” of female representation in academic careers. Women account for 59 per cent of undergraduate degrees but only 47 per cent of PhD graduates and just 21 per cent of senior faculty positions in Europe.

̽��ֱ��bias, identified in a paper published today in PLOS One, is thought to be particularly significant because departmental seminars are so frequent and because junior academics are more likely to experience them before other kinds of scholarly events. They also feature at an early stage in the career pipeline when people are making major decisions about their futures.

“Our finding that women ask disproportionately fewer questions than men means that junior scholars are encountering fewer visible female role models in their field,” warns lead author, Alecia Carter.

Self-reported behaviour and perceptions

In addition to observational data, Carter and her co-authors drew on survey responses from over 600 academics ranging from postgraduates to faculty members (303 female and 206 male) from 28 different fields of study in 20 countries.

These individuals reported their attendance and question-asking activity in seminars, their perceptions of others’ question-asking behaviour, and their beliefs about why they and others do and do not ask questions.

̽��ֱ��survey revealed a general awareness, especially among women, that men ask more questions than women. A high proportion of both male and female respondents reported sometimes not asking a question when they had one. But men and women differed in their ratings of the importance of different reasons for this.

Crucially, women rated ‘internal’ factors such as ‘not feeling clever enough’, ‘couldn’t work up the nerve’, ‘worried that I had misunderstood the content’ and ‘the speaker was too eminent/intimidating’, as being more important than men did.

“But our seminar observation data show that women are not inherently less likely to ask questions when the conditions are favourable,” says Dieter Lukas, who was a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge during the data collection.

Question-asking behaviour

̽��ֱ��researchers found that women were more likely to speak up when more questions were asked. When 15 questions were asked in total, as opposed to the median of six, there was a 7.6 per cent increase in the proportion of questions asked by women.

But when the first question in a seminar was asked by a man, the proportion of subsequent questions asked by women fell six per cent, compared to when the first question was asked by a woman. ̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that this may be an example of ‘gender stereotype activation’, in which a male-first question sets the tone for the rest of the session, which then dissuades women from participating.

“While calling on people in the order that they raise their hands may seem fair, it may inadvertently result in fewer women asking questions because they might need more time to formulate questions and work up the nerve,” said co-author Alyssa Croft, a psychologist at the ̽��ֱ�� of Arizona.

̽��ֱ��researchers were initially surprised to discover that women ask proportionally more questions of male speakers and that men ask proportionally more of female speakers.

“This may be because men are less intimidated by female speakers than women are. It could also be the case that women avoid challenging a female speaker, but may be less concerned for a male speaker,” said co-author Gillian Sandstrom, a psychologist at the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex.

Linked to this, the study’s survey data revealed that twice as many men (33 per cent) as women (16 per cent) reported being motivated to ask a question because they felt that they had spotted a mistake.

Women were also more likely to ask questions when the speaker was from their own department, suggesting that familiarity with the speaker may make asking a question less intimidating. ̽��ֱ��study interprets this as a demonstration of the lower confidence reported by female audience members.

Welcoming the research, Professor Dame Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge, said:

“Asking questions at the end of talks is one of the activities that (still) makes me most nervous ... Whatever anyone may think when they meet me about how assertive my behaviour is, it would seem that I too have internalised this gender stereotype."

Recommendations

“This problem can only be addressed by lasting changes in the academic culture which break gender stereotypes and provide an inclusive environment,” Alecia Carter says.

̽��ֱ��researchers accept that this will take time but make four key recommendations to improve the situation in departmental seminars:

Where possible, seminar organisers should avoid placing limits on the time available for questions. Alternatively, moderators should endeavour to keep each question and answer short to allow more questions to be asked.
Moderators should prioritise a female-first question, be trained to ‘see the whole room’ and maintain as much balance as possible with respect to gender and seniority of question-askers.
Seminar organisers are encouraged not to neglect inviting internal speakers.
Organisers should consider providing a small break between the talk and the question period to give attendees more time to formulate a question and try it out on a colleague.

“Although we developed these recommendations with the aim of increasing women’s visibility, they are likely to benefit everyone, including other underrepresented groups in academia,” said Carter.

“This is about removing the barriers that restrain anyone from speaking up and being visible.”

Reference:

Alecia J. Carter , Alyssa Croft, Dieter Lukas, Gillian M. Sandstrom, ‘Women’s visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men.’

PLOS ONE (2018). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202743

A new study reveals a stark disparity between male and female participation in a key area of academic life and offers recommendations to ensure all voices are heard.

Junior scholars are encountering fewer visible female role models

Alecia Carter

Christopher Rose

A seminar audience in Austin, Texas, United States

̽��ֱ��researchers and further info

̽��ֱ��researchers have compiled a list of articles about diversity in academia and encourage readers to contribute to these resources.

Alecia Carter is a Researcher at the Institut des Sciences de l’Évolution, Université de Montpellier.

Dieter Lukas is a Senior Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

Alyssa Croft is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Arizona, Tucson, USA.

Gillian Sandstrom is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex, UK.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Baboons watch neighbours for clues about food, but can end up in queues

fpjl2 — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:01:05 +0000

Latest research on social networks in wild baboon troops has revealed how the animals get information from each other on the whereabouts of food. However, once information reaches a high status baboon, subordinates often end up in a queue for scraps.

A new study, by researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Zoological Society of London, shows how baboons monitor each other for changes in behaviour that indicate food has been found, such as hunching over to scoop it up.

This ‘socially learned’ information gets transmitted through proximity: those with more neighbours are more likely to spot when someone starts feeding. Once they do, baboons will head towards the food.

Information then starts to spread through the troop, as more baboons observe feeding behaviour or notice their neighbours moving in the direction of food. However, troop hierarchy ultimately kicks in – with the most dominant member in the vicinity, usually a male, wading in to claim the spoils.

At this point, surrounding baboons will often form what can appear to be a queue, to determine who gets to explore that patch of ground next.

These queues reflect the complex interactions within a baboon troop. ̽��ֱ��sequence of baboons in a queue depends on status – sometimes through birth-right – as well as social and familial relationships to the particular baboon occupying the food patch.

̽��ֱ��new research, published in the open access journal eLife, breaks down the transmission of social information through a baboon troop into three stages:

Acquiring information: observing behaviour that suggests food.
Applying information: exploring the food patch (even if no food is left).
Finally, exploiting information: actually getting to eat.

̽��ֱ��researchers used social networking models to show how being close enough to spot behaviour change is the only driver for acquiring knowledge.

When it comes to applying and exploiting social knowledge, however, the characteristics of individual baboons – whether its sex, status, boldness, or social ties in grooming networks – determine who gets to eat, or where they are in any queue that forms.

Baboon troops can be sizable, sometimes as many as 100 members, with the troops in the latest study numbering around 70. On average, less than 25% of a troop – around 10 individuals – acquired information of a food patch, with less than 5% of the troop actually exploiting it.

“Who actually gets to eat is only half the story,” says Dr Alecia Carter, from Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, who led the research.

“Just looking at the animals that capture the benefits of information, in this case food, doesn’t reflect the real pattern of how information transmits through groups. Many more animals acquire information, but are limited in their use of it for a variety of reasons.”

To conduct the study, researchers snuck handfuls of maize corn kernels, a high-energy baboon favourite (“like finding a stash of chocolate bars”) into the path of two foraging troops of wild chacma baboons in Tsaobis Nature Park, Namibia.

Once a troop member found the food, the researchers recorded the identities of baboons that spotted the animal eating, accessed the food patch, and got anything to eat.

Carter says that the best place for low-ranking baboons is often the peripheries, in the hopes of finding food and grabbing a few kernels before information spreads, and they are supplanted by the local dominant.

“ ̽��ֱ��more dominant a baboon is, the more spatially central in the troop they tend to be – as they can afford to be there. This provides more opportunities to gain information through the wider network,” says Carter.

Low-rankers that discover food will sometimes try to eat as stealthily or as quickly as they can, but, once a dominant has taken control of the food patch, a queue will often form. Grooming relationships to the feeding dominant can help a subordinate jump up a queue, although much of it is dictated by status.

For females, status is a birth-right that remains fixed throughout a baboon’s life. While human societies historically privilege the firstborn, in baboon troops maternal lineage is ranked by lastborn – with each new female baby replacing the last in terms of hierarchy.

Young males hold the same rank as their mother until they reach adolescence, usually around the age of six, and start asserting dominance through their bigger size, leading to shifts in status.

“It is relatively easy to collect dominance data, as baboons are constantly asserting dominance,” explains Carter. “Low-cost assertions of dominance, such as pushing an individual out of small patches of food, help to mitigate high-cost assertions, such as fights, and maintain the order.”

“However, baboons can mediate their status to a minor extent by having good grooming relationships, and low-ranking individuals have a slightly higher chance of applying and exploiting information if they are central in a grooming network. Over a lifetime of food opportunities, this may prove important for fitness.”

While baboons acquire information about food locations from watching others, they can also use social learning to see when that food is likely to be gone. Interestingly, the researchers found that males and females will often use this information in different ways.

“Baboons are highly vigilant, and constantly pay attention to what their neighbours are up to. When those in a food patch are sifting through dirt and clearly coming up empty-handed, most females will walk off, and won’t waste their time,” says Carter.

“Males on the other hand, particularly young males, are amazingly persistent, and will stay in a patch shifting sand around for a very long time in the hopes of finding a stray kernel.

“We hypothesise that, while males can afford to expend the energy, adult females are lactating or pregnant most of the time, so need to conserve their strength, and often end up using the information in a more practical way as a result.”

Baboons learn about food locations socially through monitoring the behaviour of those around them. While proximity to others is the key to acquiring information, research shows that accessing food depends on the complex hierarchies of a baboon troop, and those lower down the pecking order can end up queuing for leftovers.

̽��ֱ��more dominant a baboon is, the more spatially central in the troop they tend to be – as they can afford to be there

Alecia Carter

Baboon troop

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Baboons prefer to spend time with others of the same age, status and even personality

sc604 — Wed, 13 May 2015 08:06:32 +0000

New research shows that chacma baboons within a troop spend more of their time with baboons that have similar characteristics to themselves: associating with those of a similar age, dominance rank and even personality type such as boldness. This is known as homophily, or ‘love of the same’.

A team of researchers led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and international conservation charity the Zoological Society of London says that this may act as a barrier to the transfer of new social information to the wider troop, as previous research done by the team shows baboons of a certain age and personality type – the younger, bolder animals – are more likely to be information ‘generators’: those who solve new foraging problems.

Given that information generators spend much of their time in the company of similar baboons, researchers say there is a risk that acquired information may end up exclusively confined to other information generators, thus decreasing the likelihood of new knowledge being disseminated to the wider troop.

Research teams tracked the same two baboon troops from dawn until dusk across Namibia’s Tsaobis Nature Park over several months each year between 2009-2014 to observe patterns of behaviour. ̽��ֱ��study is the first to monitor baboon social network structures over such a timescale and is published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

“Within these big troop networks over time social preferences are generally dictated by age, rank, personality and so on,” said Dr Alecia Carter, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, first author of the study. “This happens in humans all the time; we hang out with people who have the same income, religion, education etc. Essentially, it’s the same in baboons.”

To test for the personality traits of ‘boldness’ – essentially an assertive curiosity – the researchers planted unfamiliar foods on the edge of paths commonly used by baboon troops. These stimuli included hard-boiled eggs and small bread rolls dyed red or green. ̽��ֱ��research team then measured the time spent on investigating the new foodstuff, and whether they ate it, to determine a scale of boldness for members of the baboon troops.

“Our analysis is the first to suggest that bolder and shyer baboons are more likely to associate with others that share this personality trait,” said Dr Guy Cowlishaw from the Zoological Society of London, senior author of the study. “Previous studies in other animals – from chimps to guppies – suggests that time spent in the company of those with similar personalities could promote cooperation among individuals.

“Why baboons should demonstrate homophily for boldness is unclear, but it could be a heritable trait, and the patterns we’re seeing reflect family associations.”

Perhaps surprisingly, says Carter, gender was not a particular obstacle to social interaction, with females preferring to groom males. This is, in part, due to the obvious sexual engagements for breeding, but also as a tactic on the part of females to curry favour with particular males for the sake of their offspring.

“Chacma baboon males will often commit infanticide, killing the babies of rivals. Female baboons try and get around this by being as promiscuous as possible to confuse the paternal identity – so males find it harder to tell if they are killing a rival’s offspring or their own,” added Dr Carter.

“They will also try and form bonds with particular males in the hope that they will protect their offspring and let the babies forage in good places with them – although males tend to be fairly lazy when it comes to this; it’s up to the babies to follow the males to good food.”

Latest research shows that, within large troops, baboons spend more time grooming those with similar dominance rank and boldness to themselves. Preferring such grooming partners may prevent new skills and knowledge being transmitted around the wider troop, say researchers.

This happens in humans all the time; we hang out with people who have the same income, religion, education etc. Essentially, it’s the same in baboons

Alecia Carter

Grooming

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To boldly go – how personality predicts social learning in baboons

jfp40 — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 12:09:42 +0000

Working with a well-studied group of baboons in the Namibian desert, Dr Alecia Carter of the Department of Zoology set baboons learning tasks involving a novel food and a familiar food hidden in a cardboard box. Some baboons were given the chance to watch another baboon who already knew how to solve the task, while others had to learn for themselves.

To work out how bold or anxious the baboons were, she presented them either with a novel food or a threat in the form of a model of a puff adder.

She found that personality had a major impact on learning. “ ̽��ֱ��bolder baboons learnt, but although the shy ones watched the baboon with the novel tasks just as long as the bold ones did, they did not learn the task. In effect, despite being made aware of what to do, they were still too shy to act on that information,” said Dr Carter.

̽��ֱ��same held true for anxious versus calm baboons: the anxious individuals learnt the task by observing others while those who were laid back did not, even though they spent more time watching.

This mismatch between collecting social information and using it shows that personality plays a key role in social learning in animals, something that has previously been ignored in animal cognition studies.

“Our findings are significant because they suggest that animals may perform poorly in cognitive tasks not because they aren’t clever enough to solve them, but because they are too shy or nervous to interact with it. Individual differences in social learning that are related to personality may thus have to be taken into account systematically when studying animal cognition,” she said.

̽��ֱ��results also suggest that the baboons’ social networks may prevent them from learning from others. “I couldn’t test some individuals no matter how hard I tried, because although they were given the opportunity to watch a knowledgeable individual who knew how to solve the task, some baboons simply never went near a knowledgeable individual and thus never had the opportunity to learn from others,” she explained.

̽��ֱ��findings may impact how we understand the formation of culture in societies through social learning. If some individuals are unable to get information from others because they don’t associate with the knowledgeable individuals, or they are too shy to use the information once they have it, information may not travel between all group members, preventing the formation of a culture based on social learning.

̽��ֱ��study, published in PeerJ, is the result of Dr Carter’s research for her PhD at the Australian National ̽��ֱ��. Now at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Dr Carter will continue to work with the Tsaobis Baboon Project, a long-term project run by the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology.

She will return to Namibia in April and June to set up a new study examining whether the baboons’ social network really affects from whom they get social information.

Like other social animals, baboons learn from each other about which foods are best to eat. Now, researchers at Cambridge have found that how well they learn from others depends on their personality, bold or anxious baboons learning more than those who are shy or laid back.

Our findings suggest that animals may perform poorly in cognitive tasks not because they aren’t clever enough to solve them, but because they are too shy or nervous to interact.

Dr Alecia Carter

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Alecia Carter/Tsaobis Baboon Project, CC-BY

Social learning in baboons

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