Naturalising the group mind: the cognitive life of small groups and teams

Bibliography: pages 163-172.ch. 1: The conceptual and empirical space for group cognition -- ch. 2: Groups as organised wholes -- ch. 3: The cognition and enduring, higher-level interdependence -- ch. 4: Dynamicising interdependence: coordination "On the fly" -- ch. 5: A philosophy of cognition for small groups and teams -- References.Groups of people can do extraordinary things. A team of chefs is able to satisfy hundreds of guests, night after night, impressing them with the quality of that which they create and the efficiency and professionalism with which it is created. A Premier League football team astounds fans across the world with captivating on-field performances. Teams of paramedics operate under some of the most extreme temporal and emotional pressures confronted by humans, and are able to do so successfully. While there are countless examples of high-performing groups of people, there are likely just as many unsuccessful groups; not all football teams dazzle spectators, especially in amateur competitions throughout the world, and even at the elite level the best groups can have an 'off day.' Just as there are differences in abilities, skills and performance between individuals, there are differences between groups. Groups of people vary not only in the extent or continuity of their successes, but also across numerous other dimensions. Some groups are much less formal than professional teams of chefs or athletes. These less formal groups are the everyday groups we find ourselves in: book clubs, parent groups, craft groups, temporary committees, families and so on. What all of these groups, both formal and informal, have in common, is that on many occasions they involve multiple people undertaking cognitively demanding tasks together. They're remembering, planning, acting and deciding together. The cognitions and actions of each group member are coordinated such that the group is able to attempt, and hopefully complete, the relevant task and, if all goes well, do so successfully. From a scientific and philosophical perspective, the existence of such groups raises a number of interesting questions. In particular, what, if anything, makes genuine group behaviour different from aggregated individuals' behaviour, such as the behaviour of a mob or herd? And, particularly compelling, what are the processes or factors that enable multiple individuals to act as a group, especially successfully? -- One well-known way of characterising group behaviour, in both the social sciences and in the popular media, is to describe this behaviour in terms of a 'group mind'. A specific theory of the group mind is hard to pin down, but it has been associated with the surrendering of individuals' own intentionality to the group's will, a problematic metaphysics of downward causation and 'crowd' or 'herd' mentality - not the kind of skilful group performance one expects from the kinds of groups described above. Moving away from this characterisation of group behaviour, in this thesis I construct a newly robust theory of group-mind-cognition that avoids the problematic aspects typically associated with group mind claims. The motivation for this is straightforward. If we are to understand and explain how cognition unfolds in our everyday lives, an acceptable and shared goal among the cognitive sciences, then we need to understand the nature of groups, given their prevalence in our everyday life. I argue that the most useful way to do this is to characterise groups of the kind described above, as cognitive systems or information processors in their own right, under the right conditions. Throughout this thesis, a general account of group cognition is developed, which is applicable to a variety of groups across a variety of domains. -- Central to this account is the notion of 'cognitive interdependence' between the members of the group. Members are cognitively interdependent if they mutually influence one another's cognition, not merely by way of a stimulus and response relation, but through transforming one another's cognition and affecting one another's cognitive processing. By highlighting cognitive interdependence, two important steps can be made: firstly, the metaphysical claim that group cognition is a real phenomenon, subjectable to scientific and philosophical inquiry, is secured, and secondly, it helps to identify the kinds of factors and processes that facilitate successful group performance. Through identifying different forms of cognitive interdependence, this account emphasises the ways that cognitive processes can be distributed across interdependent group members. So as to generalise across a variety of different groups performing many different tasks, this account also explores the dynamic nature of cognitive interactions between group members, whereby members mutually influence one anothers' cognitions and actions, seemingly automatically, thereby enabling swift, improvisatory responses by the group to novel, unpredictable situations. On this view, group cognition is characterised as both distributed and dynamic.As an exemplar of group cognition, I explore the various ways in which members of a sports team are cognitively interdependent. By analysing sports team performance it is possible to extract some general principles that apply to groups in other domains, particularly the ways in which multiple individuals can become cognitively interdependent. This account of group cognition seeks to overcome the silences or gaps between several research fields, empirical and conceptual, each of which is independently concerned with aspects of group behaviour, social cognition and skilled action. In particular, the account integrates work from social ontology in philosophy, cognitive psychology, sports psychology, philosophy of science and organisational psychology, creating a conceptually hybrid account but also a hybrid methodology for investigating, describing, explaining and ultimately understanding the mechanisms of group cognition. -- To begin, Chapter One introduces the areas of research that are relevant to explaining group cognition, but which have not previously been integrated. The points of contact between these formerly separate areas of research are sketched, foreshadowing future opportunities for fruitful research on group cognition. As the study of group cognition per se is in its infancy, some of the basic, foundational conceptual work still needs to be done, so Chapter One also lays out the terminological terrain, explaining the key concepts as informed by the theoretical claims developed across subsequent chapters. -- Chapter Two is a metaphysical account of group cognition as a real phenomenon. This chapter lays out a plausible metaphysics for group cognition, informed by work on mechanism and emergence in the philosophy of science. This metaphysics underpins the account of group cognition developed across the thesis, and is used in this chapter, in conjunction with select work from social ontology, to distinguish between cases of genuine group cognition and aggregated individual cognition. From the integration of this work, the notion of cognitive interdependence emerges. -- Across Chapters Three and Four, the focus shifts from a general account of group cognition, to sports teams as an exemplar of this phenomenon. Both chapters explore the ways in which members of sports teams are cognitively interdependent, highlighting variability between teams and across different sports. The kind of sports teams discussed in Chapter Three are those with a shared history of playing and training together, emphasising the enduring forms of cognitive interdependence. A combination of existing qualitative research and original qualitative research is used to explore such interdependence. In contrast, Chapter Four is concerned with the situated and embodied aspects of sports team cognition, emphasising the way in which features of a teams' environment affords certain actions. Evidence of this phenomenon is drawn from existing lab-based studies of individual elite athletes from sports psychology, and alignment studies from cognitive psychology. Chapters Three and Four are evidence of the various ways in which multiple individuals can be cognitively interdependent. -- Finally, in Chapter Five key principles are extracted from the sports team exemplar and applied to other kinds of groups, thereby generalising this account of group cognition, while also acknowledging the existence of variability across groups and domains. Theoretical and methodological implications for a philosophy of team and small group cognition are also discussed in detail.Mode of access: World Wide Web.1 online resource (172 pages) illustration