Smarter Together: Using the Science of Cooperation to Build Effective Global Collaborations in Psychological Science

Scientific research is increasingly done in large teams–and large teams produce the greatest scientific impact. Big team science offers unprecedented opportunities to address global psychological questions with more power, diversity, and generalizability than traditional single-lab studies. Yet coordinating research across hundreds of collaborators and dozens of countries presents unique challenges. Drawing from the science of cooperation and group dynamics, I propose a framework for building effective large scale collaborations. Key principles include leveraging social networks for inclusive participation, fostering interdependence to motivate engagement, coordinating collective intelligence through distributed leadership, and streamlining project management. I describe some additional caveats, pitfalls, and challenges of big team science. These insights offer practical strategies for designing scalable, inclusive, and impactful scientific teams in an increasingly interconnected world.