The Impact of Co-Opetition on Cognitive Flexibility

Social interactions often involve conflicting demands, where pursuing one goal hinders another. Landkammer and Sassenberg (2016) studied the impact of co-opetition – the conflicting simultaneous demand to cooperate and compete with the same target – on cognitive flexibility. They found that compared to pure competition and cooperation, experiencing co-opetition increases cognitive flexibility (i.e., reduced rigidity in decision-making and generating more diverse ideas in a brainstorming task). Two conceptual and one direct replication (total N = 1,340) found no difference in cognitive flexibility contingent to interdependence, and Bayesian analysis showed strong evidence against an effect (BF 10 < 0.05). Our results failed to replicate the impact of co-opetition on flexibility, suggesting that conflicting demands might facilitate cognitive flexibility only in case of other types of intraindividual conflict.