Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32393632›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020

Adaptive social networks promote the wisdom of crowds.

Abdullah Almaatouq, Alejandro Noriega-Campero, Abdulrahman Alotaibi, P M Krafft, Mehdi Moussaid, Alex Pentland

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
42citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

42 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Optimal interventions to curb urban conflagration.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  3. Conformity to popular, not average, opinions: Models, data, and evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  4. One's Actions "Aging Poorly": An Integrative Egocentric Framework for Understanding Impression Management Errors and the Challenge of Temporal Impression Management.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2026
    Review
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Mixing individual and collective behaviors to predict out-of-routine mobility.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  8. Conformity to continuous and discrete ordered traits.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  9. Article
  10. Collective dynamics behind success.Nature communications · 2024
    Review
  11. AI-enhanced collective intelligence.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2024
    Review
  12. Article
  13. The power of sound: unravelling how acoustic communication shapes group dynamics.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024
    Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Multidisciplinary learning through collective performance favors decentralization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023
    Article
  18. Experimental evidence for structured information-sharing networks reducing medical errors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023
    Article
  19. Article
  20. Beyond collective intelligence: Collective adaptation.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023
    Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Abdullah AlmaatouqSloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142; amaatouq@mit.edu.ORCID 0000-0002-8467-9123
Alejandro Noriega-CamperoMedia Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.
Abdulrahman AlotaibiMedia Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.ORCID 0000-0002-9096-2443
P M KrafftOxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3JS, United Kingdom.ORCID 0000-0001-8570-2180
Mehdi MoussaidCenter for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195 Berlin, Germany.ORCID 0000-0002-1268-6332
Alex PentlandMedia Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Social networks continuously change as new ties are created and existing ones fade. It is widely acknowledged that our social embedding has a substantial impact on what information we receive and how we form beliefs and make decisions. However, most empirical studies on the role of social networks in collective intelligence have overlooked the dynamic nature of social networks and its role in fostering adaptive collective intelligence. Therefore, little is known about how groups of individuals dynamically modify their local connections and, accordingly, the topology of the network of interactions to respond to changing environmental conditions. In this paper, we address this question through a series of behavioral experiments and supporting simulations. Our results reveal that, in the presence of plasticity and feedback, social networks can adapt to biased and changing information environments and produce collective estimates that are more accurate than their best-performing member. To explain these results, we explore two mechanisms: 1) a global-adaptation mechanism where the structural connectivity of the network itself changes such that it amplifies the estimates of high-performing members within the group (i.e., the network "edges" encode the computation); and 2) a local-adaptation mechanism where accurate individuals are more resistant to social influence (i.e., adjustments to the attributes of the "node" in the network); therefore, their initial belief is disproportionately weighted in the collective estimate. Our findings substantiate the role of social-network plasticity and feedback as key adaptive mechanisms for refining individual and collective judgments.

Indexed as

Social BehaviorSocial NetworkingFeedback, PsychologicalHumansIntelligenceJudgmentModels, TheoreticalNontherapeutic Human ExperimentationRandom Allocationcollective intelligencecomplex adaptive systemssocial networksvirtual labswisdom of crowds

Identifiers

PMID32393632
PMCPMC7260971

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.