VOSS: Collaborative Research: Is Larger Smarter? Investigating the Effect of Group Size on Collective Intelligence

从Wikipedia到Linux，再到世界各地的科学和商业工作组，在线和离线小组正在成为现代生活中普遍存在的一部分。 因此，了解如何提高这些群体的业绩变得越来越重要。 这里提出的工作将使用一种新的衡量广义群体有效性的方法--称为“集体智慧”--来帮助做到这一点。 在研究人员先前工作的基础上，该项目将首先开发一个集体智慧的在线测试。 然后，它将比较在线和面对面小组参加这项新测试的结果与以前参加离线版本测试的结果。 这将有助于澄清在线和离线群体在广泛的不同任务上的一般有效性的差异程度。 接下来，该项目将使用该测试系统地测量在线群体的集体智慧，这些群体的规模从2到20人不等。 这将为探索更大的在线群体是否可以利用更多人带来的更多资源奠定基础，而不会遭受面对面群体中通常伴随群体规模增加的过程损失。 最后，该项目将系统地衡量妇女所占比例各不相同的在线群体的集体智慧。 在这样做的过程中，该项目还将测试一个特别有希望的解释，性别对群体绩效的影响：有更多女性的群体人际竞争力较低，这种较低的群体内竞争力导致更高的集体智慧。虽然对影响群体表现的因素已经有几十年的研究，但几乎所有这些研究都集中在一项任务上。 因此，严格地说，从以前的工作中吸取的教训仅限于所研究的具体任务。 这里提出的工作使用集体智慧的角度来调查，不只是一个小组执行单一任务的能力，但该小组的一般能力，以执行广泛的任务。 由于现实世界中的许多群体必须科普各种各样的问题，因此可能需要这样一个视角来系统地预测他们的表现。 此外，这里开发的方法可以提供一个显着的经济努力，在评估潜在的方式，提高在线组的有效性。 研究人员不再需要在许多不同的具体任务上测试干预措施，而是能够用这种一般性的措施来测试干预措施，然后有一些基础来预测干预措施对许多其他任务的影响。 通过向其他研究人员提供集体智慧的在线测试，该项目将有助于推进这一领域的科学实践。 更广泛地说，通过为衡量和改善群体的业绩提供更坚实的科学基础，该项目可能有助于我们的社会更有效地解决许多最重要的问题。 例如，有了正确的协作工具，在线小组可能比面对面的小组更有效，可以利用更多人的同时努力，而不会像大型小组那样失去协调能力。 了解性别多样性的动态可能有助于改善男性和女性工作的团体之间的合作，让每个人的最佳想法有更好的机会被听到。也许，有一天，这将有助于创造出比以往任何群体都更具集体智慧的群体。

From Wikipedia to Linux to scientific and business work-groups all over the world, both online and off-line groups are becoming a pervasive part of modern life. It is becoming increasingly important, therefore, to understand how to improve the performance of these groups. The work proposed here will use a new measure of generalized group effectiveness -- called "collective intelligence" -- to help do this. Building on previous work by the investigators, the project will first develop an online test for collective intelligence. Then it will compare the results of online and face-to-face groups taking this new test with previous results for groups taking an offline version of the test. This will help clarify the degree to which online and off-line groups differ in their general effectiveness on a wide range of different tasks. Next the project will use this test to systematically measure the collective intelligence of online groups that range in size from 2 to 20 people. This will lay the foundation for exploring whether larger online groups can take advantage of the increased resources that more people bring, without suffering as much from the process losses that usually accompany increased group size in face-to-face groups. Finally, the project will systematically measure the collective intelligence of online groups with varying proportions of women. In doing so, the project will also test one particularly promising explanation for a gender effect on group performance: that groups with more women are less interpersonally competitive, and that this lower intra-group competitiveness leads to higher collective intelligence. While there have been decades of research on factors that affect the performance of groups, almost all these studies have each focused on a single task. Thus, strictly speaking, the lessons to be learned from this previous work are limited to the specific tasks studied. The work proposed here uses the perspective of collective intelligence to investigate, not just the ability of a group to perform a single task, but the group's general ability to perform a wide range of tasks. Since many real-world groups must cope with a wide range of problems, just such a perspective may be needed to systematically predict their performance. In addition, the approach developed here can provide a significant economy of effort in evaluating potential ways of improving online group effectiveness. Instead of testing interventions on many different specific tasks, researchers will be able to test the interventions once with this general measure, and then have some basis for predicting the effects of the intervention on many other tasks. By making an online test of collective intelligence available to other researchers, the project will help advance scientific practice in this area. More generally, by providing a firmer scientific foundation for measuring and improving the performance of groups, the project may help our society address many of its most important problems more effectively. For instance, with the right kinds of collaboration tools, online groups may be able to be much more effective than face-to-face groups, taking advantage of the simultaneous efforts of far more people without the coordination losses that usually occur in larger groups. And understanding the dynamics of gender diversity may help to improve the collaboration of the groups in which both men and women work, by giving everyone's best ideas a better chance to be heard. And perhaps, someday, this will help create groups that are more collectively intelligent than any groups have ever been before.