Collective Attention and Collective Intelligence: The Role of Hierarchy and Team Gender Composition
通过实验研究团队层级结构（稳定、不稳定、未指定）和性别构成如何影响集体注意力（表现为发言模式），进而影响集体智慧。发现稳定层级促进合作发言，而女性占多数的团队在合作发言时集体智慧更高，全男性团队则在竞争性发言时集体智慧更高。
Collective intelligence (CI) captures a team’s ability to work together across a wide range of tasks and can vary significantly between teams. Extant work demonstrates that the level of collective attention a team develops has an important influence on its level of CI. An important question, then, is what enhances collective attention? Prior work demonstrates an association with team composition; here, we additionally examine the influence of team hierarchy and its interaction with team gender composition. To do so, we conduct an experiment with 584 individuals working in 146 teams in which we randomly assign each team to work in a stable, unstable, or unspecified hierarchical team structure and vary team gender composition. We examine how team structure leads to different behavioral manifestations of collective attention as evidenced in team speaking patterns. We find that a stable hierarchical structure increases more cooperative, synchronous speaking patterns but that unstable hierarchical structure and a lack of specified hierarchical structure both increase competitive, interruptive speaking patterns. Moreover, the effect of cooperative versus competitive speaking patterns on collective intelligence is moderated by the teams’ gender composition; majority female teams exhibit higher CI when their speaking patterns are more cooperative and synchronous, whereas all male teams exhibit higher CI when their speaking involves more competitive interruptions. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for enhancing collective intelligence in organizational teams. Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [Grant VOSS-1322254], Division of Information and Intelligent Systems [Grant 1322241], Army Research Office [Grant W911NF-20-1-0006], Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [Grant W911NF-20-1-0006], and Army Research Laboratory [Grant W911NF-19-2-0135]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1602 .