Reading the Mind in the Eyes or Reading between the Lines? Theory of Mind Predicts Collective Intelligence Equally Well Online and Face-To-Face

Recent research with face-to-face groups found that a measure of general group effectiveness (called “collective intelligence”) predicted a group’s performance on a wide range of different tasks. The same research also found that collective intelligence was correlated with the individual group members’ ability to reason about the mental states of others (an ability called “Theory of Mind” or “ToM”). Since ToM was measured in this work by a test that requires participants to “read” the mental states of others from looking at their eyes (the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test), it is uncertain whether the same results would emerge in online groups where these visual cues are not available. Here we find that: (1) a collective intelligence factor characterizes group performance approximately as well for online groups as for face-to-face groups; and (2) surprisingly, the ToM measure is equally predictive of collective intelligence in both face-to-face and online groups, even though the online groups communicate only via text and never see each other at all. This provides strong evidence that ToM abilities are just as important to group performance in online environments with limited nonverbal cues as they are face-to-face. It also suggests that the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test measures a deeper, domain-independent aspect of social reasoning, not merely the ability to recognize facial expressions of mental states.

过往针对面对面群体的相关研究表明，一项用于衡量群体整体效能的指标——集体智慧（collective intelligence），可有效预测群体在各类不同任务中的表现。该研究同时发现，集体智慧与群体成员对他人心理状态进行推理的能力显著相关，这种能力被命名为心理理论（Theory of Mind，简称ToM）。由于此项研究中对心理理论的测评采用了要求参与者通过观察他人眼部区域读取其心理状态的从眼神读心测试（Reading the Mind in the Eyes test），因此目前尚无法确定，在缺乏这类视觉线索的在线群体中，是否能够得到一致的研究结论。本研究的核心发现如下：（1）集体智慧因子对群体表现的刻画效果，在在线群体中与面对面群体大致相当；（2）令人意外的是，即便在线群体仅通过文本进行交流、完全无法直接观察彼此，心理理论测评结果依然能够同样有效地预测两类群体的集体智慧水平。这一发现为“心理理论能力在非语言线索有限的在线环境中，对群体表现的重要性不亚于面对面场景”提供了强有力的实证支持。同时也表明，从眼神读心测试所测量的，是社会推理中一种更深层、跨领域的能力维度，而非仅仅是识别心理状态面部表情的单一能力。