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

VOSS：协作研究：越大越聪明吗？

• 批准号: 1322254
• 负责人: Thomas Malone
• 金额: $ 32.84万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-10-01 至 2017-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1322254&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: VOSS; Collaborative; Research; Larger; Smarter

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.

从Wikipedia到Linux再到世界各地的科学和商业工作组，在线和离线群体都在现代生活中成为普遍的一部分。 因此，了解如何改善这些群体的绩效变得越来越重要。 这里提出的工作将采用广义群体有效性的新量度（称为“集体智能”）来帮助做到这一点。 在调查人员先前工作的基础上，该项目将首先开发集体智能的在线测试。 然后，它将比较在线和面对面组的结果与以前的测试的结果进行离线版本的结果。 这将有助于阐明在线和离线群体在各种不同任务上的一般效率上有所不同的程度。 接下来，该项目将使用此测试来系统地测量2至20人的在线群体的集体智能。 这将为探索较大的在线团体是否可以利用更多的人带来的资源奠定基础，而不会因通常伴随面对面小组中的小组规模增加的过程损失而遭受太大影响。 最后，该项目将系统地衡量与妇女比例不同的在线团体的集体智能。 在此过程中，该项目还将测试一个特别有前途的解释对性别绩效的影响：拥有更多女性的群体互动竞争力较低，并且这种较低的小组内部竞争力会导致更高的集体智慧。尽管已经对影响群体表现的因素进行了数十年的研究，但几乎所有这些研究都集中在一项任务上。 因此，严格来说，从先前工作中学到的课程仅限于所研究的特定任务。 这里提出的工作利用集体智能的观点来调查，而不仅仅是小组执行单个任务的能力，而是小组执行各种任务的一般能力。 由于许多现实世界中必须应对各种各样的问题，因此可能需要这样的观点来系统地预测其性能。 此外，此处开发的方法可以为评估提高在线群体效率的潜在方法提供大量的努力。 研究人员将能够通过此一般度量测试一次干预措施，而不是对许多不同特定任务进行测试干预措施，然后有一些基础来预测干预对许多其他任务的影响。 通过对其他研究人员提供的集体情报进行在线测试，该项目将有助于推进该领域的科学实践。 更普遍地，通过为衡量和改善群体的绩效提供更牢固的科学基础，该项目可以帮助我们的社会更有效地解决其许多最重要的问题。 例如，借助正确的协作工具，在线团体可能比面对面的小组更有效，利用了更多的人的同时努力，而没有通常在较大群体中发生的协调损失。 了解性别多样性的动态可能有助于改善男女工作的群体的合作，从而使每个人的最佳想法更好地被听到。也许有一天，这将有助于创建比以往任何时候都更加聪明的团体。