Group Structure and Information Distribution on the Emergence of Collective Intelligence

Abstract

More and more decision-making problems are being solved by groups. Collective intelligence is the ability of groups to perform well when solving complex problems. Thus, it is important to encourage collective intelligence to emerge from groups. In this study, we explore how two critical characteristics of groups, that is, group structure and individual knowledge in groups, influence the emergence of collective intelligence. To do this, we propose a measure for group structure using the collaboration network of a group and a measure for the distribution of individual knowledge in groups. Group structure is measured based on the intensities of links and whether the network is hierarchical or flat. The distribution of individual knowledge is measured from the perspective of whether group information is shared or unique. Social interactions among group members and individual changes in opinion are modeled based on a simulation technique. We find that unbalanced information distribution undermines group performance, whereas group structure can modify the effect of information distribution. We also find that groups with broadly distributed knowledge are good at solving complex problems. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72171158, 71771156 and 71971145].