What Longhorn Crazy Ants Can Teach Us About Groupthink
There’s a reason we often fail to accomplish anything in staff meetings or settle on a less effective solution.
All together now.
Photographer: Eric Feferberg /AFP via Getty Images
When scientists constructed a puzzle-solving task and pitted teams of people against teams of ants, the insects sometimes proved to be the smarter species. That’s not to denigrate human intelligence — ants are smart, and their feats of coordinated activity are rare in nature.
Still, it is fair to say the results were humbling and that ants have something important to teach us. There’s a lesson in why we sometimes fail to accomplish anything in staff meetings and why committees sometimes settle on a less effective solution to a problem than individual people could have provided.