Collaborative Reasoning: Evidence for Collective Rationality
Abstract
Reasoning may be defined as a deliberate effort to coordinate inferences so as to reach justifiable conclusions. Thus defined, reasoning includes collaborative as well as individual forms of cognitive action. The purpose of the present study was to demonstrate a circumstance in which collaborative reasoning is qualitatively superior to individual reasoning. The selection task, a well known logical hypothesis-testing problem, was presented to 143 college undergraduates—32 individuals and 20 groups of 5 or 6 interacting peers. The correct (falsification) response pattern was selected by only 9% of the individuals but by 75% of the groups. The superior performance of the groups was due to collaborative reasoning rather than to imitation or peer pressure. Groups typically co-constructed a structure of arguments qualitatively more sophisticated than that generated by most individuals. The results support Piagetian and Habermasian views of peer interaction as a locus of rational social processes.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
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?
Diversity of initial viewpoints and explicit calibrated confidence communication are two key mechanisms missing from vanilla MAD.
“Drawing on findings from human deliberation and collective decision-making, we identify two key mechanisms missing from vanilla MAD: (i) diversity of initial viewpoints and (ii) explicit, calibrated confidence communication.”
From Demystifying Multi-Agent Debate: The Role of Confidence and Diversity (2026) · cites this paper as Moshman and Geil, 1998
Cites
Restructuring the Classroom: Conditions for Productive Small Groups
Cohen, E. G. (1994) · Review of Educational Research · doi:10.3102/00346543064001001 · Cited by 2,120 · see citing works
Cheng, P. W., & Holyoak, K. J. (1985) · Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1016/0010-0285(85)90014-3 · Cited by 1,463 · see citing works
The emerging conceptualization of groups as information processors.
Hinsz, V. B., Tindale, R. S., & Vollrath, D. A. (1997) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.121.1.43 · Cited by 1,428 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Why does peer instruction benefit student learning?
Tullis, J. G., & Goldstone, R. L. (2020) · Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications · doi:10.1186/s41235-020-00218-5 · Cited by 153 · see citing works
Demystifying Multi-Agent Debate: The Role of Confidence and Diversity
Zhu, X., Zhang, C., Chi, Y., Stafford, T., Collier, N., & Vlachos, A. (2026) · Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026 · doi:10.18653/v1/2026.findings-acl.1694 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
- Authors
- Moshman, D., & Geil, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Nebraska–Lincoln (US)
- ORCID
- Moshman, David
- Venue
- Thinking & Reasoning
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1998-07-01
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 231-248
- ISSN
- 1354-6783 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-0708
- OpenAlex
- W2130423128
- Cited by
- 252
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 5.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Thinking & Reasoning (publishedVersion)
- Lincoln (University of Nebraska) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Team Dynamics and Performance
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Keywords
- collaborative reasoning, collective rationality, group reasoning, selection task, hypothesis testing, falsification, argument construction, peer interaction, imitation, peer pressure, Piagetian theory, Jürgen Habermas, social cognition
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
