Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-2024

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Garriy Shteynberg

Committee Members

Sarah Lamer, Lowell Gaertner

Abstract

Game theory research has utilized pure coordination games to examine response matching as the most basic form of coordination between participants, even when the participants are not able to communicate with one another. Studies with pure coordination games have found that people are able to coordinate above-chance, and findings suggest that there are interesting coordination differences between groups that may be influenced by the social cognition of participants. The present study explored how strangers respond in pure coordination games at dyad and group-levels and how social cognition may be impacted by synchronous and asynchronous conditions. Data from 392 students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville was used for analysis, and participants were randomly assigned to the synchronous dyad, asynchronous dyad, or the solo condition. Three research questions were addressed. The first research question sought to examine if strangers achieve above-chance coordination at the dyad and group levels, and hypotheses predicted above-chance coordination in all conditions at the dyad and group levels. The second research question sought to examine quantitative differences in coordination by condition, and it was hypothesized that participants in the synchronous condition would have the highest coordination success followed by the asynchronous condition and then the solo condition. Lastly, the third research question sought to examine qualitative differences in coordination by condition, and it was hypothesized that coordination responses would differ between participants in the dyad conditions and the solo condition. ANOVAs and paired-sample and one-sample t-tests were used for multiple analyses. All conditions achieved above-chance coordination, supporting the first hypothesis. The hypothesis for the second research question was partially supported by the data. The third hypothesis was also supported as results showed that synchronous participants and asynchronous participants had significantly different response patterns when comparing within-coding scores with scores re-coded based on the solo participants’ responses. Exploratory analyses found nonsignificant correlations between experimental items and control items for most tasks across the three conditions. Recommendations for further research include instruction modifications and investigation with diverse samples.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS