Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [280]
In Deutsch and Krauss’s Acme-Bolt Trucking Game there are two players, both “truck drivers,” one with the Acme Company, the other with the Bolt Company. This map represents the world in which they interact.
FIGURE 20
Which works better—toughing it out or cooperating?
Time is of the essence for each player. Quick trips mean profit; slow ones, loss. Each begins moving his truck at the same time and at the same speed (the positions appear on control panels), and each can choose to go by the circuitous route or the short one. The latter, although obviously preferable, involves a stretch of one-lane road that accommodates only one truck at a time. If both players choose that route at the same time, they reach a bumper-to-bumper deadlock and one or both have to back out, losing money. Obviously, the best course is for them to agree to take turns on the one-lane road, thus allowing both to make maximum and nearly equal profits.51
To simulate threat making, Deutsch and Krauss gave each player control of a gate at his end of the one-lane strip. Each player, when bargaining, could threaten to close his gate to the other’s truck unless the other agreed to his terms. The experiment consisted of twenty rounds of play in each of three conditions: bilateral threat (both players controlled gates), unilateral threat (only Acme controlled a gate), and no threat (neither player controlled a gate). Another important variable was communication. In the first experiment, the players communicated their intentions only by the moves they made; in a second one, they could talk to each other; in a third, they had to talk to each other at every trial. Since the goal of both players was to make as much money as possible, the total amount of money they made in twenty rounds of play was a direct measure of their success in resolving the conflict. The major findings:
—The players made the greatest profit (collectively) when neither could make a threat; fared less well in the unilateral threat condition; and, contrary to common belief, did worst when each could threaten the other. (Could our former belief in “mutual deterrence” as the way to avoid nuclear war have been an unthinkably expensive misjudgment from which, through luck, we did not suffer?)
—Freedom to communicate helped little toward reaching an agreement, particularly if each could threaten the other. Nor did the obligation to communicate if both could threaten, although it did if only one could.
—If the players were coached about communicating and told to try to offer fair proposals to each other, they reached agreement more swiftly than when not tutored.
—When both players could make threats, verbal communication following a deadlock led to a useful agreement more quickly than if they were allowed to communicate only before the deadlock. Apparently, becoming deadlocked was a motivating experience. —The higher the stakes, the more difficulty they had reaching agreement. —Finally, when the experiment was run by an attractive female research assistant instead of a male, the players—male undergraduates—acted in a more macho fashion, used their gates more frequently, and had significantly more trouble reaching cooperative agreements.52
The Acme-Bolt Trucking Game instantly became a classic, was widely cited, and won the prestigious AAAS award for social science research.* Like many another ground-breaking study, it was the target of criticism, much of which questioned whether the variables it was based on are found in real life. But