Social-network researcher Damon Centola challenges conventional assumptions about groupthink in an extended feature accompanying his new book, Goodthink: The New Science of Collective Intelligence.
Published by MIT Press on 13 October 2026, the book examines how communication-network structures determine whether social influence improves or degrades collective decisions. Centola describes experiments involving medical professionals, online communities and distributed problem-solving teams. In one study, locally connected teams discovered better solutions than fully connected groups because slower information propagation preserved competing ideas. Other experiments demonstrate how egalitarian networks can resist misinformation more effectively than networks dominated by influential individuals.
