Communication Colloquium: Why are Some Teams Smarter than Others?: The Dynamics of Collective Intelligence in Teams
Monday, November 7, 2016 1:30pm to 2:45pm
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Cornell University Mann Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
http://communication.cals.cornell.edu/news-eventsWhy are Some Teams Smarter than Others?: The Dynamics of Collective Intelligence in Teams
Most of us are familiar with the idea of "general intelligence" in individuals, but no one has systematically examined whether a similar kind of "collective intelligence" exists for groups of people. In two studies with 192 groups, we find converging evidence of a general collective intelligence factor that explains a group's performance on a wide variety of tasks. This "c factor" is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members, but is correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group. In thinking about how the group context may affect group collective intelligence, a more recent study involving 150 teams looks at the impact of hierarchy and status competition. We find that hierarchy appears to enhance collective intelligence in predominantly female groups, but status competition reduces it by reducing the level of synchrony evident in group communication. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings will be discussed.
Anita Williams Woolley is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. She has a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University, where she also earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. At the Tepper School of Business, she teaches MBA and executive education courses on managing people and teams in organizations.
Prof. Woolley’s research includes seminal work on team collective intelligence, which was first published in Science in 2010 and has been featured in over 700 publications and media outlets since, including Forbes Magazine, the New York Times, and multiple appearances on NPR. She was named one of the 30 most influential industrial/organizational psychologists alive in 2014 by Human Resources MBA Magazine. Professor Woolley’s research has been published in Science, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Small Group Research, among others. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Institute, as well as private corporations. She has won awards for her research and her teaching.
Professor Woolley has served on the editorial boards for Academy of Management Discoveries, Organization Science, and Small Group Research, and is a member of the Academy of Management, the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research, and the Association for Psychological Science.
co-sponsored with the Department of Information Science
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