- Observing Specialized Intelligence
- Observing General Intelligence

Observational Methods of Measuring Collective Intelligence

Measuring a group's collective intelligence through interventions requires selecting an aspect of their performance and observing their response. However, this can be challenging for large groups. For instance, a comprehensive intervention like starting a competing organization or offering substantial discounts to assess an organization's intelligence has limitations due to its scale. Smaller interventions, such as using "mystery shoppers" to evaluate customer service, are effective for assessing specialized intelligence. If these interactions involve diverse tasks, they can partially measure the organization's collective general intelligence. For example, by having a variety of mystery shoppers contact smartphone vendors' customer-service lines with different issues, one can assess collective intelligence across problem types. Discovering a common factor that predicts performance across these scenarios, as seen in small working groups, is an intriguing possibility.

Intervening to Measure Collective Intelligence

An intelligence test the measure the objective intelligence of a group the way that inelligence tests measure the intelligence of an individual. There are no widely used or created tests like this that exist. 

San Jose State University

General intelligence tests emerged as a significant breakthrough in psychology during the early 1900s, offering an objective means to measure something akin to what we commonly refer to as intelligence. 

General Intelligence Tests

Collective Intelligence can be measured through the actions of a group and their ability to efficiently perform a variety of tasks. More specifically through a comparison of the group's ability to perform one task which is then correlated with the same group's ability to perform a variety of other tasks. 

Measurement of Collective Intelligence 

Malone, Thomas W. 2018. Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together. Little, Brown Spark.

https://cci.mit.edu/superminds-by-thomas-w-malone/

Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together

- How well people perform specific tasks
- How well someone will perform in a job
- How long someone might live

What Intelligence Tests can Predict

Intelligence tests have limitations and can't predict every aspect of a person's future. Other abilities like musical, physical, and interpersonal skills, acknowledged by Howard Gardner, go beyond what these tests assess. Success in life is influenced by factors beyond intelligence, including effort, support from family and friends, and luck. While standardized tests like SATs have value, we sometimes expect too much from them. We overestimate their predictive power and emphasize the qualities they measure while overlooking other important factors.

Limitations of Intelligence Tests

In the late 1800s, Sir Francis Galton pioneered the field of intelligence assessment by developing the first broad test designed to measure intelligence. Although he was not a psychologist, his foundational work contributed significantly to the concepts and development of modern intelligence testing.

Sir Francis Galton's Contribution to Intelligence Testing

David Wechsler was an American psychologist who, after working with World War I veterans, developed a new IQ test in 1939. He defined intelligence as a person's overall capacity to act with purpose, think rationally, and interact effectively with their surroundings.

David Wechsler

The modern era of intelligence testing was effectively launched by Alfred Binet, who is credited with developing the first significant and systematic tests to measure cognitive abilities.

Alfred Binet's Contribution to Intelligence Testing

Critique the school district's plan. What fundamental advantage did this type of objective measurement offer compared to previous, more subjective methods? Conversely, what is a significant risk or flawed assumption in relying solely on a single score to make decisions about a student's educational needs?

Evaluating an Early Intelligence Testing Program

Scholars are interested in how collective intelligence can influence a group's performance. They are also interested in whether collective intelligence can be used to predict group performance. 

Collective Intelligence's influence on group performance 

Below is a list of possible group tasks that can be used to measure Collective Intelligence: 
visual puzzles, negotiating/rationing limited resources, moral-reasoning problems, brainstorming, etc. 

Collective Intelligence Tasks

- Information entropy equation
- Last-on-the-bus value
- Shapley value
- Diversity theorem

Mathematical Models of Collective Intelligence

- Group Performance
- Speed of Learning in a Group
- Group Performance in Video Games

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