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  3. If you lock a bunch of high-IQ people in a room and tell them to get on with a task, what will they e-merge with? Lower IQs, for

If you lock a bunch of high-IQ people in a room and tell them to get on with a task, what will they e-merge with? Lower IQs, for

admin2014-06-25  42
问题     If you lock a bunch of high-IQ people in a room and tell them to get on with a task, what will they e-merge with? Lower IQs, for one thing. A study done by Virginia Tech tried to replicate how people think under social pressure. Subjects with an average IQ of 126 were clustered into problem-solving groups and exposed to judgments about their work. A pecking order formed. The low performers showed high responses in the part of the brain that regulates fear. The scientists concluded that "individuals express diminished cognitive capacity in groups, an effect that is worsened by perceived lower status".
    This is the first ill word any scientist has had for the way groups think in a very long time. Over the past decade or two, story after story has spoken glowingly of "hive mind" and the "wisdom of crowds". Are these profound new insights or are they a cognitive-science trend on which the tide is now receding?
    They are both. There is certainly something measurable that can be called collective intelligence. A fascinating study of its operation was published in the magazine Science two years ago. They asked small groups to do a variety of mental tests and then play a game of draughts. A collective equivalent of general intelligence is just what they found. Moreover, it was not just an artefact of the individual intelligences that made up the groups. The correlation of group thinking with the average intelligence of the group, or with the intelligence of the group’s smartest member, was weak. Strong correlations were with the "average social sensitivity of group members and the equality in distribution of conversation turn-taking". Office bullies and those who can’t shut up drive down productivity.
    These two findings—that there is such a thing as collective intelligence and that working in groups makes individuals a bit duller are not necessarily contradictory. A human being probably loses a bit of thinking capacity in subordinating himself to a group, no matter what feats the collective is able to carry out. Whether this trade-off is worthwhile depends on what the groups are doing. If western culture as it existed until two decades ago stood for any one thing, it was the defence of the individual against the herd. Individuals produced King Lear and the Discourse on the Method. The "wisdom of crowds" produces a few retail fads at best, book-burnings and pogroms at worst.
    Our own time thinks itself different. It is marked by integration of markets and innovations in networking and sales. Crowd-sourced Wikipedia(flawed, quick and free)helped drive Britannica(authoritative, labour-intensive and dear)out of the paper encyclopedia business. No one has the time to read King Lear, let alone write it. Anybody who can spark a retail fad is acclaimed a genius. The wisdom of crowds: in fact, may be just an updated version of the age-old wisdom of retail; when it comes to what the crowd wants, the crowd is all-knowing.
Which of the following is closest to the message the text tries to convey?
选项 A、Groupthink is a major source of innovation.
B、Groupthink is no match for solo genius.
C、Collective wisdom is culturally defined.
D、Collective wisdom is nothing new, but an age-old wisdom.
答案B
解析 本文前三段以两种研究结果说明“群体智慧确实存在(群体智慧大于个人)，但群体工作会让个体智慧降低”。第四段表明观点“我们需要在二者之间做出平衡”，并指出：西方文化曾因强调“个人天份”而出现了《李尔王》、《方法论》等不朽巨著；而“群体智慧”除了引发零售热潮外，更多导致的是负面结果(焚书现象和大屠杀等)。第五段进一步表明作者的遗憾：目前对“群体智慧”的过度宣扬使我们的时代无法再创造出《李尔王》(无法产生“个人天才”)。可见，作者意在表明，群体智慧无法替代个人天才，[B]选项正确。
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