This is ongoing research so for now it's just a hypothesis, but definitely one to follow. There's a website (http://www.eyethink.org/index.html) but it doesn't seem to contain any more information, probably because this is for an ongoing PhD. I hope they'll put out a press release when the paper/thesis is published.
"Group conformity stands in marked contrast to the “wisdom of crowds” effect, whereby aggregating the opinions of large numbers of people gives answers or predictions more accurate than those of any individual. This happens only when members of a crowd make their judgements independently of each other, and it is most effective when a crowd is diverse. In cohesive groups, on the other hand, where members share an identity, the urge for unity overrides all. So when Richardson presents us with a picture of a killer whale and asks us how much the creature weighs, he’ll be better off taking the average of the answers we give independently, rather than following the scramble of dots on the screen."
Sounds like stuff I've been saying for a while, and well worth testing.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160113-are-your-opinions-really-your-own
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