If you think that people are sheep, you may be right. Pacificists torture civilians in times of war, environmentalists toss their trash on the ground at big music festivals, kids taunt their best friends if they are the brunt of jokes in their classrooms. This is defined as “groupthink,” or a common behavior and state-of-mind within a group that may be completely different than what the individual would do on his or her freewill. The collective that is the opposite of groupthink—working for good—is called “collective intelligence.” Scientists think collective intelligence can be used more collaboratively for intellectual good and to overcome personal bias. This kind of thinking has taken place since the beginning of time in humans, bacteria and animals, but can be applied differently and more liberally in our technologically sophisticated age.
Collective intelligence comes about from collaboration and competition between many individuals, eventually creating a group decision. The group must be permanent, if only for a short time, and tied together in some way that encourages a collective feeling. For example, a group of randomly assembled individuals on a bus that ran out of gas on a country road would have to make a collective decision. The marker of the group mentality is if one of the individuals has a different belief, that person will be cast out of the group. The only way the collective intelligence of the group is dismantled is if the group is disbanded or if new thoughts challenge the group’s core beliefs.
Some scientists say that collective intelligence allows groups of people to form strong communities united in a single goal. Personal bias can affect decision making and thinking, they say. In uniting with a group in a common goal, individuals can make better decisions. Essentially, collective intelligence allows for a surival of the fittest of ideas—only the best will rise to the top and the less potentially successful ones will be dropped. This idea is called “The Golden Suggestion,” or a group’s willingness to accept an idea no matter who in the chain of command it comes from.
Here are the four principles necessary for collective intelligence:
- Openness—the willingness to share ideas. Collaboration and sharing of ideas is more productive than keeping an idea to oneself.
- Peering—the ability to share ideas with peers and to edit and collaborate—usually electronically—on ideas and documents. This is in contrast to the old model of business where there was a divide between the people in charge and the people who listened to their instructions.
- Sharing—This is the business model of sharing some ideas with other companies, while still keeping some intellectual property and patent rights.
- Acting Globally—The Internet allows for new, global companies to emerge with little to no actual physical space. Geographical boundaries are no longer so important in global business.
One of the most progressive centers studying and innovating in the field of collective intelligence in the United States is the one at MIT, called the Center for Collective Intelligence. The center conducts research on emerging technologies and the way that collaboration functions in today’s society. In essence, the Center defines collective intelligence as something that has been around forever, but has different and new applications in the digital age. Google and Wikipedia are just a few of the Center’s examples of using international individual intelligence to create strong, peer-created collective intelligence.