Collective Intelligence Heuristic: An Experimental Evidence

TL;DR

This study investigates how group size and task complexity influence collective problem-solving in virtual environments, revealing that smaller groups exhibit stronger cooperation on complex tasks, with de-individualization playing a role.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence on the impact of group size and task complexity on collective intelligence and cooperation in virtual settings.

Findings

Smaller groups show higher cooperation in complex tasks.

Cooperation decreases as group size increases.

De-individualization influences cooperative behavior in virtual environments.

Abstract

The main intreest of this study was to investigate the phenomenon of collective intelligence in an anonymous virtual environment developed for this purpose. In particular, we were interested in studiyng how dividing a fixed community in different group size, which, in different phases of the experiment, works to solve tasks of different complexity, influences the social problem solving process. The experiments, which have involved 216 university students, showed that the cooperative behaviour is stronger in small groups facing complex tasks: the cooperation probability negatively correlated with both the group size and easiness of task. Individuals seem to activate a collective intelligence heuristics when the problem is too complex. Some psychosocial variables were considered in order to check how they affect the cooperative behaviour of participants, but they do not seem to have a significant impact on individual cooperation probability, supporting the idea that a partial de-individualization operates in virtual environments.