Abstract
A group's collective intelligence reflects its capacity to perform well across a variety of cognitive tasks and it transcends the individual intelligence of its members. Previous research shows that group members' social sensitivity is a potential antecedent of collective intelligence, yet it is still unclear whether individual or group-level indices are responsible for the positive association between social sensitivity and collective intelligence. In a comprehensive manner, we test the extent to which both compositional (lowest and highest individual score) and compilational aspects (emergent group level) of social sensitivity are associated with collective intelligence. This study has implications for research that explores groups as information processors, and for group design as it indicates how a group should be composed with respect to social sensitivity if the group is to reach high levels of collective intelligence. Our empirical results indicate that collectively intelligent groups are those in which the least socially sensitive group member has a rather high score on social sensitivity. Differently stated, (socially sensitive) group members cannot compensate for the lack of social sensitivity of the other group members.
Highlights
Small social groups are information-processing units (Hinsz et al, 1997; Hinsz, 2015), extensively used in organizations to solve problems, make important decisions and generate innovations (Devine et al, 1999)
In line with team personality models (Barrick et al, 1998; LePine et al, 2011), we argue that the positive association between the highest/lowest individual social sensitivity score and collective intelligence (CI) is likely to reflect different convergence mechanisms explained by the compositional and compilational emergence logic described in the multi-level perspective on groups (Kozlowski and Chao, 2012; Kozlowski et al, 2013)
If the lowest social sensitivity score significantly and positively predicts CI, it would imply that majority influence processes, leading to group-level convergence of social sensitivity, explain the association between social sensitivity and CI. Based on this compositional logic and drawing on minority and majority influences we explore the extent to which the minimum level of social sensitivity as well as the maximum score within group will be associated to collective intelligence in groups
Summary
Small social groups are information-processing units (Hinsz et al, 1997; Hinsz, 2015), extensively used in organizations to solve problems, make important decisions and generate innovations (Devine et al, 1999). An integrative framework that explains the effectiveness of these collective cognitive systems is the teams as cognitive technology framework (Wallace and Hinsz, 2010; Hinsz, 2015) This framework argues that teams are a form of human technology and the use of teams can be seen as a method for solving practical organizational problems, just like the use of any other technology (Hinsz, 2015). In line with this framework, a group’s cognitive performance results from
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
