Measuring the Wisdom of a Crowd

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June 21, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.

- H. E. Luccock -

Measuring the Wisdom of a Crowd

The "intelligence" of a group can be measured, according to a new study, and it has little to do with the brain power of its individual members. What makes a team more intelligent has more to do with the group's interactions. More equal participation and greater social awareness on the part of its members are the key factors in predicting a group's intelligence. "It really calls into question our notion of what intelligence is," said study lead author Anita Williams Woolley of Carnegie Mellon. "It's been thought about as something that resides in one person." Instead, three key social factors were correlated with group intelligence: how good the group was at distributing turn-taking, how socially sensitive the group members were, and how many women were on each team. { read more }