A new study published on August 26 in the journal Science explains the old adage that two heads are better than one is not always true.
Professors Chris Frith of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London (UCL) and Niels Bohr at the University of Aarhus in Denmark and colleagues discovered that two heads work best when they are equals and can speak freely with one another.Bahador Bahrami, MD, researcher at UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and lead author of the study, explained, "When we are trying to solve problems, we usually put our heads together in teams, calling on each other's opinions.
"For our study, we wanted to see if two people could combine information from each other in a difficult judgement task and how much this would improve their performance."Frith noted, "When two people working together can discuss their disagreements, two heads can be better than one. But, when one person is working with flawed information - or perhaps is less able at their job - then this can have a very negative effect on the outcome.
This is just the sort of evidence we need to show that PPA (Potential Performance Analyst) is a necessary tool to develop effective collaboration.