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Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online

Many modern interactions happen in a digital space, where automated recommendations and homophily can shape the composition of groups interacting together and the knowledge that groups are able to tap into when operating online. Digital interactions are also characterized by different scales, from s...

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Autores principales: Pescetelli, Niccolò, Rutherford, Alex, Rahwan, Iyad
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8159948/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34045445
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23424-1
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author Pescetelli, Niccolò
Rutherford, Alex
Rahwan, Iyad
author_facet Pescetelli, Niccolò
Rutherford, Alex
Rahwan, Iyad
author_sort Pescetelli, Niccolò
collection PubMed
description Many modern interactions happen in a digital space, where automated recommendations and homophily can shape the composition of groups interacting together and the knowledge that groups are able to tap into when operating online. Digital interactions are also characterized by different scales, from small interest groups to large online communities. Here, we manipulate the composition of groups based on a large multi-trait profiling space (including demographic, professional, psychological and relational variables) to explore the causal link between group composition and performance as a function of group size. We asked volunteers to search news online under time pressure and measured individual and group performance in forecasting real geo-political events. Our manipulation affected the correlation of forecasts made by people after online searches. Group composition interacted with group size so that composite diversity benefited individual and group performance proportionally to group size. Aggregating opinions of modular crowds composed of small independent groups achieved better forecasts than aggregating a similar number of forecasts from non-modular ones. Finally, we show differences existing among groups in terms of disagreement, speed of convergence to consensus forecasts and within-group variability in performance. The present work sheds light on the mechanisms underlying effective online information gathering in digital environments.
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spelling pubmed-81599482021-06-11 Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online Pescetelli, Niccolò Rutherford, Alex Rahwan, Iyad Nat Commun Article Many modern interactions happen in a digital space, where automated recommendations and homophily can shape the composition of groups interacting together and the knowledge that groups are able to tap into when operating online. Digital interactions are also characterized by different scales, from small interest groups to large online communities. Here, we manipulate the composition of groups based on a large multi-trait profiling space (including demographic, professional, psychological and relational variables) to explore the causal link between group composition and performance as a function of group size. We asked volunteers to search news online under time pressure and measured individual and group performance in forecasting real geo-political events. Our manipulation affected the correlation of forecasts made by people after online searches. Group composition interacted with group size so that composite diversity benefited individual and group performance proportionally to group size. Aggregating opinions of modular crowds composed of small independent groups achieved better forecasts than aggregating a similar number of forecasts from non-modular ones. Finally, we show differences existing among groups in terms of disagreement, speed of convergence to consensus forecasts and within-group variability in performance. The present work sheds light on the mechanisms underlying effective online information gathering in digital environments. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8159948/ /pubmed/34045445 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23424-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Pescetelli, Niccolò
Rutherford, Alex
Rahwan, Iyad
Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online
title Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online
title_full Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online
title_fullStr Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online
title_full_unstemmed Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online
title_short Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online
title_sort modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8159948/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34045445
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23424-1
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