Face To Face Interaction• When Two Heads are Better than One

While ample work shows that groups often outperform the average individual within a group, very little research has demonstrated that groups can outperform the most capable individual in the group. This work is dedicated to determining the conditions that support group interaction, and equally important, identifying the likely ways in which a group will outperform individuals. One consistent finding has been that groups spontaneously generate abstract representations more frequently than individuals do. Another finding has been that group functioning improves when external resources, specifically contrasting cases, provide support for articulating partial knowledge.