Beyond IQ: The Importance of Metacognition for the Promotion of Global Wellbeing.

Lav R Varshney,Aron K Barbey

doi:10.3390/jintelligence9040054

Lav R Varshney, Aron K Barbey

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence9040054

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Abstract

Global policy makers increasingly adopt subjective wellbeing as a framework within which to measure and address human development challenges, including policies to mitigate consequential societal problems. In this review, we take a systems-level perspective to assemble evidence from studies of wellbeing, of collective intelligence, and of metacognition and argue for a virtuous cycle for health promotion in which the increased collective intelligence of groups: (1) enhances the ability of such groups to address consequential societal problems; (2) promotes the wellbeing of societies and the individual wellbeing of people within groups; and, finally, (3) enables prosocial actions that further promote collective problem-solving and global wellbeing. Notably, evidence demonstrates that effective collaboration and teamwork largely depend on social skills for metacognitive awareness—the capacity to evaluate and control our own mental processes in the service of social problem-solving. Yet, despite their importance, metacognitive skills may not be well-captured by measures of general intelligence. These skills have instead been the focus of decades of research in the psychology of human judgment and decision-making. This literature provides well-validated tests of metacognitive awareness and demonstrates that the capacity to use analysis and deliberation to evaluate intuitive responses is an important source of individual differences in decision-making. Research in network neuroscience further elucidates the topology and dynamics of brain networks that enable metacognitive awareness, providing key targets for intervention. As such, we further discuss emerging scientific interventions to enhance metacognitive skills (e.g., based on mindfulness meditation, and physical activity and aerobic fitness), and how such interventions may catalyze the virtuous cycle to improve collective intelligence, societal problem-solving, and global wellbeing.

Highlights

Collective intelligence, metacognition, and wellbeing are three constructs that have developed largely independently from one another in psychology and allied fields, which we review here
Social problem-solving is largely driven by social engagement (Mao 2016) and the collective intelligence of a community (Tovey 2015; Malone and Woolley 2020), which itself depends on effective collaboration and teamwork due to social skills from metacognitive awareness (Gupta and Woolley 2020)
The mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of multi-modal training are still under investigation, animal models suggest that both cognitive and physical fitness training may promote neural plasticity and stimulate neurogenesis (Fabel 2009). These findings support the efficacy of multi-modal interventions—providing evidence that this approach can enhance performance on tests of executive function and further motivating their potential for the promotion of metacognitive awareness, collective intelligence, and subjective wellbeing. In this short review article, we brought together findings from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and the social science of intelligence to argue for a virtual cycle of global wellbeing that can be accelerated via interventions to enhance individual metacognition

Summary

Construct Validity

By analogy with the individual intelligence factor g, Woolley et al (2010) defined. By analogy with the individual et al. Perform a wide group’s collective intelligence (c) as the general ability of the group to perform a wide vavariety of tasks. C emerges when the ability of a group to perform taska psychometric is correlated with that group’s ability to perform a wide range to of perform one task is correlated with that group’s ability to perform a wide range of other other tasks This kind of collective intelligence is a property of the group itself, not just tasks. Metacognitive awareness, with astates key dimension of metacognitive knowledge, is deas beliefs about one’s own mental and processes as well as beliefs about those of fined beliefs about one’s own mental in states and processes as well as skills beliefsisabout those otheras people (Jost et al.1998) Aptitude these specific metacognitive the focus of our analysis. This validity of this broader construct of subjective wellbeing is still under investigation (Pancheva et al 2021)

Interventions to Improve Wellbeing via Improved Metacognitive Skills

Summary