However, my memory is that for a while there was some more specific work in psychology that was allegedly identifying properties that predicted team success better than the individual abilities of its members, which then largely didn’t replicate.
Woolley et al (2010) was an influential paper arguing that individual intelligence doesn’t predict collective intelligence well. Here’s one paper criticising them. I’m sure there are plenty of other relevant papers (I seem to recall one paper providing positive evidence that individual intelligence predicted group performance fairly well, but can’t find it now).
I think one should distinguish between whether wealthier countries are more progressive, and whether wealthier individuals within a country are more progressive.
Wealthier countries do seem more progressive, on plausible definitions on those notions (but that leaves the issue of causality).
Whether wealthier individuals are more progressive than their compatriots is a tricky issue. One factor is education, which is associated with both wealth and progressive views. See this interesting paper by Piketty.