Team reasoning-Experimental evidence on cooperation from centipede games

PLoS One. 2018 Nov 28;13(11):e0206666. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0206666. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Previous laboratory studies on the centipede game have found that subjects exhibit surprisingly high levels of cooperation. Across disciplines, it has recently been highlighted that these high levels of cooperation might be explained by "team reasoning", the willingness to think as a team rather than as an individual. We run an experiment with a standard centipede game as a baseline. In two treatments, we seek to induce team reasoning by making a joint goal salient. First, we implement a probabilistic variant of the centipede game that makes it easy to identify a joint goal. Second, we frame the game as a situation where a team of two soccer players attempts to score a goal. This frame increases the salience even more. Compared to the baseline, our treatments induce higher levels of cooperation. In a second experiment, we obtain similar evidence in a more natural environment-a beer garden during the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup. Our study contributes to understanding how a salient goal can support cooperation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Animals
  • Arthropods
  • Cooperative Behavior*
  • Female
  • Game Theory
  • Games, Experimental
  • Group Processes*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Probability
  • Soccer / psychology
  • Thinking*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding from third parties. The study was funded by the annual means that the University of Passau grants to the authors. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.