Positive Mob Psychology
We’ve tended to focus on the negative, the idea that people can bring out the worst in each other. There’s also evidence that groups can bring out the best in us.
Instead of seeing groups as nameless and faceless affiliations that swallow up an individual’s identity, the new work on collective behavior suggests that in company lies opportunity. …Instead of pronouncing a person’s intellectual engine good or bad, the research suggests that group intelligence is highly malleable and that concrete steps — such as mixing newcomers into an established team or not allowing a single leader to dominate — could fundamentally alter the group’s intelligence. More broadly, groups and the complex social structure of human interactions may help account for how people got “smart” in the first place. T
