Collective Intelligence and Selecting the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournaments

Abstract

Every year millions of people fill out brackets, trying to accurately predict the outcome of the NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness tournament. This study examines how collective swarm intelligence might impact these choices in small groups. Rather than working by themselves, groups of people came together to combine their knowledge and opinions and pick brackets collectively. It is generally agreed that collective intelligence is effective in decision-making. However, how and why collective intelligence augments performance has not been totally agreed upon, and the theoretical explanations have been elusive. This study examines groups that are either highly dedicated or high in expertise to see whether they perform differently based on these dimensions.

g versus c: comparing individual and collective intelligence across two meta-analyses

“…Since it was first hypothesized in 2010, the c- factor has been conceptually replicated by the original authors across different cultures (Engel et al 2015a , b ) and contexts (Engel et al 2014a , b ) and has been reported as sharing links to a variety of real-world outcomes including business performance (Mayo and Woolley 2017 ), team learning and academic achievement (Engel et al 2015a , b ; Woolley and Aggarwal 2017 ), scientific endeavors (Bear and Woolley 2011 ; Woolley and Fuchs 2011 ), competitive team video-game performance (Kim et al 2017a , b ), and high-stakes group decision-making (Radcliffe et al 2019 ; Rogers et al 2019 ).…”