New research from Harvard professors Anita Woolley and Thomas Malone suggests that teams are smarter with more women. The research was published in this month’s Harvard Business Review (subscription required), and HBR.org is hosting an interview and podcast with the professors behind the research.

The methodology: People aged 18-60 were provided IQ tests and assigned randomly into teams. Teams were evaluated with a collective IQ score as well, after being asked to complete tasks (brainstorming, decision making, visual puzzles, etc.) and solve a complex problem.

The finding: Teams that had members with higher IQs didn’t earn higher team intelligence scores; however, those teams who had women did. In other words, if a team includes more women, its collective intelligence rises.

“Before we did the research, we were afraid that collective intelligence would be just the average of all the individual IQs in a group. So we were surprised but intrigued to find that group intelligence had relatively little to do with individual intelligence,” shared Malone about the study.

The researchers have faith in their findings, but cannot explain the exact factors contributing to the increase in collective intelligence. Their hunch, as is others, is the heightened social sensitivity of women.

“What do you hear about great groups? Not that members are all really smart but that they listen to each other. They share criticism constructively. They have open minds. They’re not autocratic,” explained Wooley. “In our study, we saw pretty clearly that groups that had smart people dominating the conversation were not very intelligent groups.”

Think the research is bunk? HBR.org asked Malone and Wooley to “defend your research,” and is hosting a podcast and interview with the researchers behind the study.