by Zoë Pollock
Coming to a friend near you? Researchers have developed a "sociometric badge" that can measure social cues "such as variations in the tone and pitch of the voice." They tested college students who were tasked with working on a project together for 10 days:
Each person was indicated by a dot, which ballooned for loquacious individuals and withered for quiet ones. Their tendency for monologues versus dialogue was represented by red for Hamlets and white for conversationalists. … By the end of the experiment, all the dots had gravitated towards more or less the same size and colour. Simply being able to see their role in a group made people behave differently, and caused the group dynamics to become more even. The entire group's emotional intelligence had increased.
The Dish 