The dramatic expansion of internet communication tools has led to the increased use of temporary online groups to solve problems, provide services, or produce new knowledge. However, many of these groups need help to collaborate effectively. The rapid development of new tools and collaboration forms requires ongoing experimentation to develop and test new ways to support this novel form of teamwork. Building on research demonstrating the use of nudges to shape behavior, we report the results of an experiment to nudge teamwork in 168 temporary online groups randomly assigned to one of four different nudge treatments. Each nudge was designed to spur one of three targeted collaborative processes (collaborator skill use, effective task strategy, and the level of collective effort) demonstrated to enhance collective intelligence in extant research. Our results support the basic notion that digitally nudging collaborative processes can improve collective intelligence. However, to our surprise, a couple of nudges had unintended negative effects and ultimately decreased collective intelligence. We discuss our results using structured speculation to systematically consider the conditions under which we would or would not expect the same patterns to materialize in order to clearly articulate directions for future research.

中文翻译：

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利用数字推动增强在线协作中的集体智慧：来自意外结果的见解

互联网通信工具的急剧扩展导致人们越来越多地使用临时在线小组来解决问题、提供服务或产生新知识。然而，其中许多团体需要帮助才能有效协作。新工具和协作形式的快速发展需要不断的实验来开发和测试新的方法来支持这种新颖的团队合作形式。基于证明使用助推来塑造行为的研究，我们报告了一项实验的结果，该实验在 168 个临时在线小组中进行团队合作，随机分配到四种不同的助推处理中的一种。每一次推动都是为了刺激三个有针对性的协作过程（协作者技能的使用、有效的任务策略和集体努力的水平）之一，这些过程被证明可以增强现有研究中的集体智慧。我们的结果支持了这样一个基本概念：数字化推动协作流程可以提高集体智慧。然而，令我们惊讶的是，一些推动产生了意想不到的负面影响，并最终降低了集体智慧。我们使用结构化推测来讨论我们的结果，以系统地考虑我们期望或不期望相同模式实现的条件，以便清楚地阐明未来研究的方向。