Group Cognition

What is the typical paradigm to test group cognition?

short tasks, common aims, few people

What are typical results from decision tasks in groups?

Individuals more likely than groups to state that we cant tell, this is the intuition. After a few minutes of discussion more people come to the right answer than individually.

What is confirmation bias?

A preference for seeking information that can only confirm your existing beliefs, rather than contradict it.

What are the results from the Wason selection task in groups?

80% get the answer right

Are groups better than individuals?

Most of the time groups performed at the accuracy of second best member of the group

Why is comparing groups hard?

Factors need to be defined

What are task types?

Tasks with definite answers vs opinionated answers

How do groups compare with individuals on intellective/judgement tasks?

Groups are better at intellective tasks and vice versa for judgement tasks

What are standards of comparison?

The benchmark to compare people’s performance

What are coordination methods?

How the group functions (level of discussion, anonymity, revision etc.)

What are individual differences in context of group cognition?

Sources of info, ability & other capacities

How is a group consensus achieved?

Revision (individual) & weighting (group)

What is the lens model of group decision making and consensus?

A framework to help us think systematically about the different factors which might affect group cognition

What conditions influence the Wisdom of Crowds?

Uncorrelated errors and no systematic bias

What are uncorrelated errors?

Independent estimates with no systematic biases or coordination between group members

How can correlated errors affect groups?

Reduces the wisdom of crowds effect

What is groupthink?

Polarisation in group decision making- attitudes expressed in the group move away from the average of individuals’ opinions and move towards a more extreme position

What are criticisms of groupthink?

• Lack of empirical evidence for all of the constructs associated with groupthink

• Focus on when group decisions have led to negative outcomes, restricts the understanding of group decision making process.

How can diversity affect group cognition?

More complex discussions and higher quality outcomes

What is the interactionist account of reason

Reason evolved to produce and evaluate arguments, not for individuals to solve problems

What is the argumentative theory of reasoning?

Exchange of arguments is key

What is collective intelligence?

The ability of a group to perform a wide variety of tasks

What is c?

The general ability of a particular group to perform well across a wide range of different tasks

How does c correlate with general intelligence of group members (g)?

Moderate relationship

What is c correlated with?

• the average social sensitivity of group members

• the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking

• the proportion of females in the group

• diversity within the group (can hinder or help depending on the task

• cognitive diversity (e.g., thinking styles)

What are predictors of group intelligence

• Average social sensitivity

• Amount of communication

• Distribution of communication

• Strongly suggests that the coordination problem of group work often overweighs the intellectual challenges