14 DAY TRIAL // A new scientific research shows that two people can learn to cooperate intuitively – even without communication or a clear intention to coordinate, but larger groups need to communicate.
A team of researchers from the University of Leicester’s School of Psychology and Department of Economics, wanted to explain how people learn to cooperate, even when they don't know that they are interacting with each other, and how come when a third party shows up, explicit communication becomes necessary.
Professor Andrew Colman, Dr Briony Pulford, Dr David Omtzigt, and Dr Ali al-Nowaihi carried out a series of laboratory experiments with several groups of people, of different sizes, and they managed to develop a mathematical model of the process of intuitive learning.
The experiment had a simple principle: the participants received financial gains or losses after pressing one of two buttons on a computer, without knowing that the right choice depended on the neighbor.
After repeating the game several times, in groups of two gains started to overcome losses, but this did not happen in three-person or larger groups, AlphaGalileo reports.
In order to explain the main idea, Professor Colman gave the example of two different parents who chose every morning the snacks for their kids:
“Every morning, Alf chooses whether to give his son raisins or cheese sticks to snack on during the day; similarly, Beth chooses between popcorn or peanuts for her daughter’s snack.
“The children are friends and always share their snacks with each other at school, although their parents know nothing about this.
“Alf’s son is allergic to peanuts and gets ill if he eats any of his friend’s peanuts, and Beth’s daughter is allergic to cheese and gets ill if she eats any of her friend’s cheese sticks.
The point is that even though the parents' choice does not affect their own child, they have an option that could be safe for the other parent's kid and another option that could harm him/her.
“The choices of Alf and Beth govern each other’s fates and, in the game of life, while two people may ‘develop an understanding’ or work intuitively together – this scenario is easily distorted once a third person becomes involved,” says Colman.
He adds that “married couples or pairs of business partners may be able to rely on this type of intuitive cooperation, to an extent, but larger groups need explicit communication and planning.
“Intuitive cooperation is really a case of two’s company, but three’s a crowd.”
Andrew Colman is a Professor of Psychology, Briony Pulford is a Lecturer in Psychology, Ali al-Nowaihi is a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Leicester and David Omtzigt, previously a Research Associate at the University of Leicester, is now a Postdoctoral Researcher at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
This research was funded by the British Academy Larger Research Grants Scheme, and it will appear in the journal Cognitive Psychology.