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: 1322214
• 负责人: Christopher Chabris
• 金额: $ 0.36万
• 依托单位: Union College
• 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=1322214&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 us 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.

从维基百科到 Linux，再到世界各地的科学和商业工作组，在线和离线组正在成为现代生活的普遍组成部分。 因此，了解如何提高这些群体的绩效变得越来越重要。 这里提出的工作将使用一种新的广义群体有效性衡量标准——称为“集体智慧”——来帮助实现这一目标。 在研究人员之前的工作基础上，该项目将首先开发集体智慧在线测试。 然后，它将进行这项新测试的在线和面对面小组的结果与之前进行离线版本测试的小组的结果进行比较。 这将有助于澄清线上和线下团体在各种不同任务上的总体有效性的差异程度。 接下来，该项目将使用该测试来系统地测量 2 至 20 人规模的在线群体的集体智慧。 这将为探索更大的在线团体是否可以利用更多人带来的更多资源奠定基础，而不会遭受通常伴随面对面团体规模扩大而造成的流程损失。 最后，该项目将系统地测量女性比例不同的在线群体的集体智慧。 在此过程中，该项目还将测试性别对群体绩效影响的一种特别有希望的解释：女性较多的群体的人际竞争力较低，而较低的群体内竞争力会导致较高的集体智慧。尽管对影响群体绩效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单一任务上。 因此，严格来说，从之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视角来研究，不仅仅是一个群体执行单一任务的能力，而是该群体执行广泛任务的一般能力。 由于许多现实世界的群体必须应对各种各样的问题，因此可能需要这样的视角来系统地预测他们的表现。 此外，这里开发的方法可以在评估提高在线小组效率的潜在方法方面提供显着的经济效果。 研究人员无需在许多不同的特定任务上测试干预措施，而是能够使用这种一般措施测试一次干预措施，然后就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该领域的科学实践。 更一般地说，通过为衡量和提高群体绩效提供更坚实的科学基础，该项目可以帮助我们的社会更有效地解决许多最重要的问题。 例如，使用正确类型的协作工具，在线团体可能比面对面团体更有效，可以利用更多人的同时努力，而不会出现大型团体中通常发生的协调损失。 了解性别多样性的动态可能有助于我们改善男性和女性工作的群体之间的合作，让每个人的最佳想法都有更好的机会被听到。也许有一天，这将有助于创建比以往任何团体都更具集体智慧的团体。