GROUP WISDOM

GROUP WISDOM

Popular author James Surowiecki points to British scientist Francis Galton, who applied statistical methods to demonstrate that groups—made up of people at all intellectual levels—often perform better than any one individual.

When 787 local residents who visited a regional livestock fair guessed the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox, Galton calculated the average score of the locals who predicted the weight to be 1,197 pounds. The ox eventually weighed in at 1,198 pounds. The group average hadn’t merely come close to the correct weight, it had been almost exactly correct. The point Surowiecki makes about crowds is: “Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.”

A more up-to-date example is the “Ask the Audience” part of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, where the studio audience are polled and the most popular answer is the correct answer 91% of the time.

As Surowiecki  says even if there is a better individual guess, you face the problem of deciding which individual’s guess to select. If you choose the crowd’s guess, the decision is made for you and there is every opportunity that you will get a good answer, certainly better than choosing randomly from the other guesses.

Note: This does not mean we blindly follow what the majority says. Rather what it encourages us to do is to respect the knowledge, experience and wisdom of the group and thereby also being open to their perspective about the situation. Group wisdom is just a guiding force and should not be the substitute for taking responsibility for our action.