The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

Membership in a group can be a potent source of motivation—if we feel a genuine sense of belonging to the group, and if our personal identity feels firmly tied to the group and its success. When these conditions are met, group membership acts as a form of intrinsic motivation: that is, our behavior becomes driven by factors internal to the task, such as the satisfaction we get from contributing to a collective effort, rather than by external rewards such as money or public recognition.

Psychologists have found that groups differ widely on what they call “entitativity”—or, in a catchier formulation, their “groupiness.” Some portion of the time and effort we devote to cultivating our individual talents could more productively be spent on forming teams that are genuinely groupy.

In order to foster a sense of groupiness, there are a few deliberate steps we can take. First, people who need to think together should learn together—in person, at the same time. The omnipresence of our digital devices can make it difficult to ensure that shared learning takes place, even among students gathered in a single classroom.

A second principle for engendering groupiness would go like this: people who need to think together should train together—in person, at the same time. Research shows that teams that trained as a group collaborate more effectively, commit fewer errors, and perform at a higher level than teams made up of people who were trained separately.

A third principle for generating groupiness would hold that people who need to think together should feel together—in person, at the same time. Laboratory research, as well as research conducted with survivors of battlefield conflicts and natural disasters, has found that emotionally distressing or physically painful events can act as a kind of “social glue” that bonds the people who experienced them together.

The fourth and final mandate for eliciting groupiness is this: people who need to think together should engage in rituals together—in person, at the same time.

Today, fewer than 10 percent of journal articles in science and technology are authored by just one person. An analysis of book chapters and journal articles written across the social sciences likewise found “a sharp decline in single-author publishing.” In economics, solo-authored articles once predominated; now they account for only about 25 percent of publications in the discipline. In the legal field, a 2014 survey of law reviews concluded that nowadays, “team authors dominate solo authors in the production of legal knowledge.” Even the familiar archetype of the solo inventor (think Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell) is no longer representative. A 2011 report found that over the previous forty years, the number of individuals listed on each US patent application had steadily increased; nearly 70 percent of applications now named multiple inventors.