Bringing the Wisdom of the Crowd to an Individual by Having the Individual Assume Different Roles

Groups of people tend to generate more diverse ideas than individuals because each group member brings a different perspective to the table. But while someone working alone can suffer from fixation and have difficulty of thinking outside-the-box, in this paper we show that it is possible to help them think more like a group by asking them to approach a problem from different perspectives. We present a study of 54 crowd workers in which some individual workers were asked to assume the role of various relevant experts while solving a problem. We find that participants who were asked to assume different roles came up with more creative ideas than those who were not. These findings suggest there is an opportunity for problem solving tools to bring the wisdom of the crowd to individuals.