Collaborative learning in networks
Open accessAbstract
Complex problems in science, business, and engineering typically require some tradeoff between exploitation of known solutions and exploration for novel ones, where, in many cases, information about known solutions can also disseminate among individual problem solvers through formal or informal networks. Prior research on complex problem solving by collectives has found the counterintuitive result that inefficient networks, meaning networks that disseminate information relatively slowly, can perform better than efficient networks for problems that require extended exploration. In this paper, we report on a series of 256 Web-based experiments in which groups of 16 individuals collectively solved a complex problem and shared information through different communication networks. As expected, we found that collective exploration improved average success over independent exploration because good solutions could diffuse through the network. In contrast to prior work, however, we found that efficient networks outperformed inefficient networks, even in a problem space with qualitative properties thought to favor inefficient networks. We explain this result in terms of individual-level explore-exploit decisions, which we find were influenced by the network structure as well as by strategic considerations and the relative payoff between maxima. We conclude by discussing implications for real-world problem solving and possible extensions.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
A growing body of research documents a complex but persistent and critical relationship between social networks' structure and collectives' ability to collaborate, coordinate and solve problems that ultimately shape cultural repertoires.
“A growing body of research documents a complex but persistent and critical relationship between social networks' structure and collectives' ability to collaborate, coordinate and solve problems [123][124][125] that ultimately shape cultural repertoires 74,126 .”
From Machine culture (2023) · cites this paper as [124]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks
Watts, D. J., & Strogatz, S. H. (1998) · Nature · doi:10.1038/30918 · Cited by 43,060 · see citing works
Self-citationExploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning
March, J. G. (1991) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.2.1.71 · Cited by 21,942 · see citing works
A set of measures of centrality based upon betweenness
Freeman, L. (1977) · Sociometry · doi:10.2307/3033543 · Cited by 10,557 · see citing works
Burt, R. S. (1992) · doi:10.4159/9780674029095 · Cited by 9,093 · see citing works
Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition
Lazega, E., & Burt, R. S. (1995) · Revue Française de Sociologie · doi:10.2307/3322456 · Cited by 7,970 · see citing works
The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution
Kauffman, S. A. (1993) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780195079517.001.0001 · Cited by 7,855 · see citing works
The origins of order; self organization and selection in evolution
Kauffman, S. A. (1994) · International Journal of Biochemistry · doi:10.1016/0020-711x(94)90119-8 · Cited by 6,753 · see citing works
Power and Centrality: A Family of Measures
Bonacich, P. (1987) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/228631 · Cited by 5,305 · see citing works
Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk
Paolacci, G., Chandler, J., & Ipeirotis, P. G. (2010) · Judgment and Decision Making · doi:10.1017/s1930297500002205 · Cited by 3,767 · see citing works
The Interplay Between Exploration and Exploitation
Gupta, A. K., Smith, K. G., & Shalley, C. E. (2006) · Academy of Management Journal · doi:10.5465/amj.2006.22083026 · Cited by 3,239 · see citing works
Conducting behavioral research on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
Mason, W., & Suri, S. (2012) · Behavior Research Methods · doi:10.3758/s13428-011-0124-6 · Cited by 3,172 · see citing works
Self-citationEvidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups
Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1193147 · Cited by 2,685 · see citing works
The difference: how the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies
(2007) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.45-1534 · Cited by 2,280 · see citing works
Adaptation on Rugged Landscapes
Levinthal, D. A. (1997) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.43.7.934 · Cited by 2,254 · see citing works
Communication Patterns in Task-Oriented Groups
Bavelas, A. (1950) · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · doi:10.1121/1.1906679 · Cited by 2,059 · see citing works
Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem
Uzzi, B., & Spiro, J. (2005) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/432782 · Cited by 1,885 · see citing works
Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties
Centola, D., & Macy, M. (2007) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/521848 · Cited by 1,878 · see citing works
The Online Laboratory: Conducting Experiments in a Real Labor Market∗Preprint
Zeckhauser, R. J. (2016) · Cited by 1,454 · see citing works
Some effects of certain communication patterns on group performance.
LEAVITT, H. J. (1951) · Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0057189 · Cited by 1,340 · see citing works
Imitation of Complex Strategies
Rivkin, J. W. (2000) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.46.6.824.11940 · Cited by 1,324 · see citing works
Designing games with a purpose
von Ahn, L., & Dabbish, L. (2008) · Communications of the ACM · doi:10.1145/1378704.1378719 · Cited by 1,156 · see citing works
Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance
Guimerà, R., Uzzi, B., Spiro, J., & Amaral, L. A. N. (2005) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1106340 · Cited by 1,126 · see citing works
Page, S. E. (2008) · Princeton University Press eBooks · doi:10.1515/9781400830282 · Cited by 888 · see citing works
Why Copy Others? Insights from the Social Learning Strategies Tournament
Rendell, L., Boyd, R., Cownden, D., Enquist, M., Eriksson, K., Feldman, M. W., Fogarty, L., Ghirlanda, S., Lillicrap, T., & Laland, K. N. (2010) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1184719 · Cited by 811 · see citing works
The Network Structure of Exploration and Exploitation
Lazer, D., & Friedman, A. (2007) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2189/asqu.52.4.667 · Cited by 696 · see citing works
Fang, C., Lee, J., & Schilling, M. A. (2009) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.1090.0468 · Cited by 588 · see citing works
An improved index of centrality
Beauchamp, M. A. (1965) · Systems Research and Behavioral Science · doi:10.1002/bs.3830100205 · Cited by 557 · see citing works
Financial incentives and the "performance of crowds"
Mason, W., & Watts, D. J. (2009) · doi:10.1145/1600150.1600175 · Cited by 544 · see citing works
Self-citationPerlin, K. (2002) · ACM SIGGRAPH Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) · doi:10.1145/566570.566636 · Cited by 465 · see citing works
Financial incentives and the "performance of crowds"
Mason, W., & Watts, D. J. (2010) · ACM SIGKDD Explorations Newsletter · doi:10.1145/1809400.1809422 · Cited by 463 · see citing works
Self-citationCooperation and Contagion in Web-Based, Networked Public Goods Experiments
Suri, S., & Watts, D. J. (2011) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016836 · Cited by 355 · see citing works
Self-citationCooperation and contagion in web-based, networked public goods experiments
Suri, S., & Watts, D. J. (2011) · ACM SIGecom Exchanges · doi:10.1145/1998549.1998550 · Cited by 318 · see citing works
Self-citationAdding Interpersonal Learning and Tacit Knowledge to March's Exploration-Exploitation Model
Miller, K. D., Zhao, M., & Calantone, R. J. (2006) · Academy of Management Journal · doi:10.5465/amj.2006.22083027 · Cited by 312 · see citing works
Perlin, K. (2002) · ACM Transactions on Graphics · doi:10.1145/566654.566636 · Cited by 259 · see citing works
Propagation of innovations in networked groups.
Mason, W., Jones, A., & Goldstone, R. L. (2008) · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · doi:10.1037/a0012798 · Cited by 169 · see citing works
Self-citationPhelps, C. (2010) · Academy of Management Journal · doi:10.5465/amj.2010.52814627 · Cited by 96 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Inside the Turk: Understanding Mechanical Turk as a Participant Pool
Paolacci, G., & Chandler, J. (2014) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721414531598 · Cited by 2,136 · see citing works
Exercise contagion in a global social network
Aral, S., & Nicolaides, C. (2017) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms14753 · Cited by 329 · see citing works
Partial connectivity increases cultural accumulation within groups
Derex, M., & Boyd, R. (2016) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1518798113 · Cited by 289 · see citing works
Cooperation and assortativity with dynamic partner updating
Wang, J., Suri, S., & Watts, D. J. (2012) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1120867109 · Cited by 198 · see citing works
Self-citationSocial learning strategies modify the effect of network structure on group performance
Barkoczi, D., & Galesic, M. (2016) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms13109 · Cited by 131 · see citing works
Brinkmann, L., Baumann, F., Bonnefon, J.-F., Derex, M., Müller, T. F., Nussberger, A.-M., Czaplicka, A., Acerbi, A., Griffiths, T. L., Henrich, J., et al. (2023) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-023-01742-2 · Cited by 132 · see citing works
Social Learning Strategies in Networked Groups
Wisdom, T. N., Song, X., & Goldstone, R. L. (2013) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1111/cogs.12052 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
Human biases limit cumulative innovation
Thompson, B., & Griffiths, T. L. (2021) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.2752 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
How to Solve Problems with Crowds: A Computer‐Based Simulation Model
Vuculescu, O., & Bergenholtz, C. (2014) · Creativity and Innovation Management · doi:10.1111/caim.12059 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
When Your AI Agent Succumbs to Peer-Pressure: Studying Opinion-Change Dynamics of LLMs
Mehdizadeh, A., & Hilbert, M. (2025) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.19107
“We adopt ten distinct network structures from the foundational work of Mason and Watts [130] which later extended by Barkoczi and Galesic [131] for larger networks.”
- Authors
- Mason, W., & Watts, D. J.
- Affiliations
- Stevens Institute of Technology (US)
- Yahoo! Research, New York, NY 10018
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2011-12-19
- Volume
- 109
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 764-769
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC3271930
- OpenAlex
- W2122309512
- Cited by
- 356
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 25 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 27 · 2015: 26 · 2014: 26 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 21.13
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Team Dynamics and Performance
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Network Analysis Techniques
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration
- Keywords
- cooperative learning, complex problem solving, exploration-exploitation balance, information dissemination, network structure, collective intelligence, strategic behavior, payoff structure, group problem solving
- MeSH terms
- Cooperative Behavior, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Imitative Behavior, Learning, Male, Social Support, Time Factors
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
