The wisdom of polarized crowds.

As political polarization in the United States continues to rise, the question of whether polarized individuals can fruitfully cooperate becomes pressing. Although diverse perspectives typically lead to superior team performance on complex tasks, strong political perspectives have been associated with conflict, misinformation and a reluctance to engage with people and ideas beyond one's echo chamber. Here, we explore the effect of ideological composition on team performance by analysing millions of edits to Wikipedia's political, social issues and science articles.