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Regional project · Citizen science research

Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments

Citizen science experiments on how we decide, cooperate and think as a group

About the project

Between 2011 and 2019, Ibercivis launched and supported a series of citizen science experiments on social behaviour: how we make decisions, when we cooperate, what makes us happy and how we connect words.

A large part of this work focused on collective intelligence: is a group of people smarter than its smartest member? To find out, the experiments used the online platform ThinkHub, where participants could see other people’s answers, copy them and change them until they reached a shared solution.

Many experiments involved upper secondary (bachillerato) students in Aragon, who took part at the same time from their schools; others were open to anyone through online questionnaires, games or mobile apps.

Project objectives

  • Bring researchers and the public together in research on social relationships, based on game theory and complex networks.
  • Assess how far citizen science can be used in the social sciences.
  • Study individual and collective performance, and how ideas emerge, spread and evolve in very large groups.
  • Spark interest in science by making students and the public direct participants in a scientific experiment.

The role of Ibercivis

Ibercivis’s role varied from one experiment to another. In Project Q it handled software development, web design, communication and prizes; in Happy Up, the technical development of the app; and Feelicity grew out of a joint idea by Ibercivis and the organisers of TEDxZaragoza.

In the experiments with schools, such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma or Colectivamente 2019, Ibercivis coordinated the schools’ participation, publicised the calls, and organised teacher workshops and prize-giving ceremonies. The scientific work was led mainly by BIFI at the University of Zaragoza.

Our activities

  • Development of web platforms and mobile apps for the experiments.
  • Coordination with secondary schools in Aragon and allocation of anonymous user accounts to students.
  • Training workshops for teachers, accredited by the Department of Education of the Government of Aragon (Colectivamente 2019).
  • Posters, leaflets, and coverage on social media and in the press (Heraldo de Aragón, El Periódico de Aragón, Clepsidra magazine).
  • Management of prizes, certificates and incentives for participants.

The experiments

  • Feelicity: an online map and mobile app for sharing each person’s happiest moments and places, and analysing the words and expressions linked to positive feelings. It started with TEDxZaragoza (November 2011) and also collected recordings of laughter for a study by the Aragon Institute of Health Sciences.
  • Prisoner’s Dilemma: an online game with around 1,200 final-year bachillerato students in Aragon connected at the same time, to analyse how interactions affect people who make decisions with incentives. The app was developed by BIFI and Carlos III University of Madrid, with support from the Cubit space, the Ciencia Viva programme and sponsorship from HP.
  • Happy Up: a mobile app from San Jorge University (Felicicom Lab) that measured happiness with a 21-question questionnaire and suggested training in the areas that scored lowest (2014).
  • Mind Paths: an online game to build a semantic map, in which participants chose which words lead from a starting word to a target word, measuring the perceived distance between words.
  • Project Q (The Lab, 2014): an online survey-experiment to assess the use of citizen science in the social sciences. It has its own project page.
  • Colectiva-mente: a pioneering collective intelligence experiment with final-year bachillerato students in Aragon, with science and humanities questions, run by Ibercivis and the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation at CaixaForum Zaragoza (24 October 2014).
  • Ser o no ser D+I: a ThinkHub experiment in which participants jointly drew up the ‘ten essentials’ of innovative science communication, during the 2nd D+I Innovative Outreach Conference.
  • Ciencia en familia: a decision-making experiment with young people aged 17 to 19, each accompanied by a parent and a grandparent, at Campus Río Ebro (22 October 2015).
  • Colectivamente 2019: a collaborative exam on ThinkHub for around a thousand first-year bachillerato students in Aragon, comparing a reference group with no interaction against a collective intelligence group. The problems were designed by the United States Foreign Trade Institute Chair of Advanced Intelligence at the University of Zaragoza, and the platform by Kampal.
  • Collective intelligence and the SDGs: an online experiment with students from all over Spain, part of CSIC’s activities at COP25 (10 December 2019), to propose up to five priority actions for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. The results were to be presented at the Madrid Climate Summit and at the European Water Summit in Zaragoza.

Gallery

Image of the Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments project
Image of the Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments project
Image of the Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments project
Image of the Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments project
Image of the Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments project
Image of the Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments project

Project details

Type of project

Regional

Duration

2011 – 2019

Consortium

Fundación Ibercivis, BIFI (University of Zaragoza), Carlos III University of Madrid, University of Granada, Middlesex University London, San Jorge University, Kampal Data Solutions, ‘la Caixa’ Foundation, Government of Aragon and CSIC, depending on the experiment

Area

Citizen science research

Logo of the Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments project
Logo of the Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments project
Logo of the Behavioural and collective intelligence experiments project