Groups recall travel details better than loners

It pays to travel in a group. When people put their heads together, they can piece together the details of a train station or airport announcement that they heard better than even the most accurate group member can manage alone, a new study finds.

Teams’ advantage over individuals on this task depended on an exchange of opinions about what had been announced, enabling majority decisions to be reached, say evolutionary biologist Ralf Kurvers of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin and his colleagues.