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Collective Intelligence Heuristic: An Experimental Evidence

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Internet Science (INSCI 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9934))

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Abstract

The main intrest of this study was to investigate the phenomenon of collective intelligence in an anonymous virtual environment developed for this purpose. In particular, we were interested in studing how dividing a fixed community in different group size, which, in different phases of the experiment, works to solve tasks of different complexity, influences the social problem solving process. The experiments, which have involved 216 university students, showed that the cooperative behaviour is stronger in small groups facing complex tasks: the cooperation probability negatively correlated with both the group size and easiness of task. Individuals seem to activate a collective intelligence heuristics when the problem is too complex. Some psychosocial variables were considered in order to check how they affect the cooperative behaviour of participants, but they do not seem to have a significant impact on individual cooperation probability, supporting the idea that a partial de-individualization operates in virtual environments.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by EU Commission (FP7-ICT-2013-10) Proposal No. 611299 SciCafe 2.0.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Science of Education and Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Federica Stefanelli, Enrico Imbimbo & Andrea Guazzini

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Florence and INFN, Florence, Italy

    Franco Bagnoli

  3. Center for the Study of Complex Dynamics, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Franco Bagnoli & Andrea Guazzini

Authors
  1. Federica Stefanelli
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  2. Enrico Imbimbo
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  3. Franco Bagnoli
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  4. Andrea Guazzini
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Enrico Imbimbo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Franco Bagnoli

  2. Center for Research and Technology, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Anna Satsiou

  3. National and Kapodistrian University, Athens, Greece

    Ioannis Stavrakakis

  4. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Paolo Nesi

  5. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Giovanna Pacini

  6. University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Yanina Welp

  7. University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

    Thanassis Tiropanis

  8. University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

    Dominic DiFranzo

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Stefanelli, F., Imbimbo, E., Bagnoli, F., Guazzini, A. (2016). Collective Intelligence Heuristic: An Experimental Evidence. In: Bagnoli, F., et al. Internet Science. INSCI 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9934. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45982-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45982-0_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45981-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45982-0

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