Speaker:

Joshua Becker - Postdoctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management and NICO

Title:

Network Structures of Collective Intelligence: The Contingent Benefits of Group Discussion

Abstract:

Research on the “wisdom of crowds” has found that the average belief in a group can be remarkably accurate even when individual group members are wildly inaccurate. This phenomenon has been observed for domains ranging from financial forecasting to medical diagnoses, and a common theoretical claim is that group beliefs are most accurate when they are collected from individuals who are socially and statistically independent. However, the requirement for independence poses a challenge in many social and organizational settings where interaction and communication are an intrinsic part of decision-making. In contrast, I show that social information processing can produce beliefs that are even more accurate than the collected beliefs of independent individuals—under the right conditions. This talk will present formal models and behavioral laboratory experiments to identify when, and why, group interaction can help (or hurt) numeric belief accuracy. The main focus of this talk compares mediated information exchange (i.e., the “Delphi method”) with unstructured discussion, showing how network theory can resolve longstanding contradictions in previous research. All discussed data is available on GitHub and my website.

Working Paper: https://bit.ly/2lZ6zHF

Speaker Bio:

Joshua Becker is a postdoctoral fellow at Kellogg School of Management and a researcher-in-residence at NICO. Joshua completed his PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, with a focus on the network dynamics of collective intelligence. Their research has been published in venues including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Harvard Business Review. Prior to grad school Joshua worked professionally in conflict mediation (now serving pro bono) an experience that inspires their research on communication and decision-making.

Live Stream:

bluejeans.com/8474912528

Related Info