Tom Malone on collective intelligence and the “genetic” structure of groups

The average intelligence of the people in the group and the maximum intelligence of the people in the group doesn’t predict group intelligence.

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So how do you engineer groups that can problem-solve effectively? First of all, seed them with, basically, caring people. Group intelligence is correlated … with the average social sensitivity — the openness, and receptiveness, to others — of a group’s constituents. The emotional intelligence of group members, in other words, serves the cognitive intelligence of the group overall. And this means that — wait for it — groups with more women tend to be smarter than groups with more men.