The psychological background of adolescents' behavior in a two-person nonzero sum game

A total of 176 Czech 14-year-old subjects repeatedly played a nonzero sum two-person symmetric 2 × 2 game where competition was necessarily self-damaging. The “peaceful” strategy always brought a greater monetary payoff than the “competitive” strategy. The player with the competitive strategy, however, was able to gain three times as much as the player using the peaceful strategy. Both players gained no money when they both chose competitively; they gained most when both played peacefully. In the main experiment, pairs of Ss (two boys or two girls) thought they were playing together for money, but in reality all were subjected to predetermined treatments: an 80 percent peaceful treatment at first (50 trials) and a 90 percent tit-for-tat treatment with a second player (50 trials). Ss' intelligence, sociometric status and teachers' ratings of cooperativeness and competitiveness in class were known. Dull boys and bright girls were relatively competitive and increased their competition during the peaceful treatment (they “exploited” the peaceful partner). Bright boys and dull girls were relatively peaceful and did not change during peaceful treatment. Tit-for-tat treatment led to increasing frequency of peaceful choices on the part of both bright boys and bright girls, but dull boys and dull girls were relatively competitive with a tit-for-tat partner. Sociometric status indices and teachers' ratings did not correlate with the game experiment data. Cognitive and motivational aspects of the results are discussed and the importance of taking into account the intellectual abilities of Ss in game experiments is stressed.