Experimental groups working cooperatively outperform most individuals in those groups on problem-solving tasks, and they usually do about as well as the sharpest solo decision maker in a group. The few psychologists who study groups operating in the real world have uncovered intriguing clues to the power of collective judgments without ever mentioning group selection, Wilson argues. For instance, Edwin Hutchins of the University of California, San Diego studied 10-man navigation teams on Navy aircraft carriers and amphibious helicopter transports. Navigation teams conduct complex calculations to maneuver huge vessels into and out of harbors. Once a ship gets safely away from shore, a single navigator assumes the helm.
Members position themselves so that mistakes made by one person can be caught by someone else.
Tasks merge together so that the team can cover for a member who gets called away. This comes as no shock to Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Group selection shaped decision making throughout much of human prehistory, Boehm argues. Stone Age survival tactics preserved genes that facilitate people's ability to fit into relatively small bands, which pool available information and solve pressing problems collectively. This evolved capacity may help to explain why navigation teams routinely keep aircraft carriers from plowing through docks and why the Hutterites avoid cultivating crops of conniving schemers worthy of television's Melrose Place.