Perhaps the whole can be better than the sum of its parts?

I came across a very interesting study on McGill University’s excellent Brain from Top to Bottom Blog.

In this study of collective intelligence, the researchers performed numerous statistical analyses. The most interesting finding that emerged from them, and that went beyond the debate about just what exactly collective intelligence might represent, was that this factor was not highly correlated with either the average intelligence of the groups’ members or with the intelligence of the group member who had scored the highest on the individual-intelligence test. In other words, a group composed of brilliant individuals will not automatically be the most brilliant group.
The psychologists did find some factors that let them predict whether a given group would be collectively intelligent. But to identify three, they had to look at factors associated with co-operation. The first such factor was the group’s overall social sensitivity—the members’ ability to perceive each other’s emotions. The second factor was equality in taking turns speaking during group decision-making. The third factor was the proportion of women in the group. This last finding is highly consistent with other data showing that women tend to be more socially sensitive than men and to take turns speaking more naturally than men do.

via The Collective Intelligence of Groups