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Communication and action predictability: two complementary strategies for successful cooperation
Title / Series / Name
Royal Society Open Science
Publication Volume
9
Publication Issue
9
Pages
Authors
Editors
Keywords
Communication
Competition
Cooperation
Coordination
Decision making
Predictability
Competition
Cooperation
Coordination
Decision making
Predictability
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/14198
Abstract
Making one's actions predictable and communicating what one intends to do are two strategies to achieve interpersonal coordination. It is less clear whether these two strategies are mutually exclusive or whether they can be used in parallel. Here, we asked how the availability of communication channels affects the use of strategy to make one's actions predictable. In three experiments, we investigated how people reach joint decisions if they are not allowed to communicate at all (Experiment 1), allowed minimal reciprocal communication (Experiment 2), or allowed to use the full range of conventional communication (Experiment 3). We found that when participants were not allowed to communicate, coordination was achieved by increasing action predictability. When conventional communication was allowed, there were no attempts to increase action predictability. In the minimal reciprocal communication condition, successful pairs both increased action predictability and established a communication system. Overall, this study demonstrates that people are able to flexibly adapt to coordination challenges during joint decision making and that communication reduces behavioural constraints on joint action coordination.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2022
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1098/rsos.220577