PWR-188 · Team & Collective Intelligence

Collective decision making

Groups can be smarter than their members in one configuration and worse in another. Titan will not reduce that complexity to a collective IQ.

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Revision 7T · Full Tutorial Edition · Release manifest · Methodology · Corrections

One source of teaching truth

Canonical Power learning unit · TLU-PWR-188

A four-person group preserves first answers, reveals confidence and unique evidence, uses an agreed aggregation rule and checks whether the group beat the best member.

Canonical Power page
PWR-188 · Collective decision making
Full tutorial
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Practical authority
The tutorial teaches a low-risk method that may be practised inside its stated limits.
Current treatment
Full low-stakes tutorial
Research depth
deep · 7 bound sources
Risk framing
high
Capability self-practice
Permitted inside the tutorial's stated low-risk limits
Pathway membership
G-CUR-020

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Explanation is not permission.

This dossier explains the evidence and its limits. It is not a diagnosis, personal recommendation, assessment, clearance, performance promise or training programme. Actionable teaching appears only when the canonical Power record explicitly authorises it.

Complete bounded explanation

What this power means.

Capability to develop or express collective decision making in a declared context without inheriting broader claims.

What the current evidence supports

Groups can outperform individuals under specific competence, information and communication configurations—and can also perform worse.

How to observe or measure it without overclaiming

Declare members, individual competence, task battery, information distribution, aggregation, confidence, best-member comparator, affected-person outcome, harms and delay; a latent factor is not human worth.

Myth

Measure the intelligence of any team with one score

Metric

Outcome relative to best member and alternatives under declared information, competence and rights

Boundary

A task-battery factor cannot rank team worth, guarantee wisdom or erase affected-person rights.

Negative and limiting findings

  • Dyads with unequal sensitivity could do worse than their best member.
  • Later experiments did not support turn-taking or gender-composition explanations and challenged the original factor account.

Claims this evidence cannot support

  • collective IQ score
  • rank the smartest teams
  • two heads are always better
  • more women makes a team intelligent
  • AI reveals group intelligence

Individual tutorial · FULL SELF GUIDED TUTORIAL

How to learn this Power now.

A four-person group preserves first answers, reveals confidence and unique evidence, uses an agreed aggregation rule and checks whether the group beat the best member.

  1. Get readyUse a harmless fictional choice with an answer key and no real resource allocation.
  2. Learn the method8 concrete steps teach the permitted method from start to finish.
  3. See right and wrong4 comparisons show correct or safer execution beside common wrong or riskier choices.
  4. PractiseComplete one six-case set, revise one rule, and retest on six new cases after 48 hours. Repeat monthly with a different information distribution; progress only against majority and best-member benchmarks.
  5. Check progressBaseline fixture: Four fictional “water quality” analysts receive answer-key cases. Two have high-sensitivity test cards, one has cost data and one has community-impact information; the group must choose A, B or defer. Enter success checks from “Define rights and decision rule” and “Apply the declared aggregation”. If “Let early speakers set everyone’s starting answer.” occurs, apply its named fix; then score Outcome relative to best member and alternatives under declared information, competence and rights on the unused “Retest the rule” item.

Authority boundary: Titan teaches a concrete low-stakes method step by step while keeping evidence and transfer claims bounded. The method is Power-specific; its actionability follows this treatment.

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Related Powers: PWR-185 · PWR-186 · PWR-187 · PWR-189

Direct evidence register

Sources that support—and limit—the claim.

Citation roles are explicit. A source may support existence or trainability while simultaneously limiting transfer, certainty, generalisation or safety.

  1. Primary empirical supportLimiting / contrary
    Smart groups of smart people: Evidence for IQ as the origin of collective intelligence in the performance of human groups

    Timothy Bates; Shivani Gupta · 2017 · Primary research

  2. Primary empirical supportLimiting / contrary
    Pooling of unshared information in group decision making: Biased information sampling during discussion

    Garold Stasser; William Titus · 1985 · Primary research

  3. Primary empirical supportLimiting / contrary
    Optimally interacting minds

    Bahador Bahrami; Karsten Olsen; Peter E. Latham; Andreas Roepstorff; Geraint Rees; Chris D. Frith · 2010 · Primary research

  4. Primary empirical supportLimiting / contrary
    Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups

    Anita Williams Woolley; Christopher F. Chabris; Alex Pentland; Nada Hashmi; Thomas W. Malone · 2010 · Primary research

  5. Official boundary context
    TeamSTEPPS 3.0

    Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality · 2023 · Official authority

  6. Limiting / contraryOfficial boundary context
    Employment practices and data protection: monitoring workers

    Information Commissioner’s Office · 2023 · Official authority

  7. Limiting / contraryOfficial boundary context
    Shared decision making

    National Institute for Health and Care Excellence · 2021 · Official authority

Current teaching and evidence boundary

The next gate remains visible.

External confirmation is required before higher-authority use because: a clinical, high-risk or regulated configuration.

A Power-specific tutorial is available at /tutorials/pwr-188/. It contains a plain-English method, 8 ordered steps, a worked example, right-versus-wrong comparisons, specific mistakes and corrections, practice, measurement, accessibility, stopping rules and evidence. Its self guided mode remains controlling.