Comparison between young children’s and college students’ cooperative success in an online Stag Hunt: Do prior training, sex, relationship, and nature of communication matter?

Cooperation is an important feature of human lives and society. Understanding the underlying social-contextual factors of differences in cooperative success across different ages is therefore crucial for understanding human development. The Stag Hunt is a widely used paradigm for studying cooperation. However, results of previous studies with young children and college students playing the Stag Hunt are difficult to compare because of methodological differences.
The main goal of the current study was to compare cooperative success between children (136 dyads, M = 8.1 years) and college students (113 dyads, M = 22.8 years) using an online version of a coordination game, the Stag Hunt, with 10 trials, including versions with and without prior training on the reward structure. College students showed better abilities to cooperate compared to children. In addition, prior training improved overall cooperation, but the effect of training
declined over the trials, while untrained college students, but not children, gradually learned to cooperate. Players’ sex and relationship type did not affect cooperation. The nature of communication during the game, however, played an important role in the cooperative success of both children and students, with communication about the reward structure improving cooperation and competitive expressions hindering it. Finally, communication unrelated to the game did not affect cooperative success in children and college students. The current study therefore highlights the importance of age, prior knowledge, and nature of the communication in coordination processes. Future research should take these into account when designing tasks and interpreting the results.