Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Playing Games To Improve Conceptual Understanding And Cooperation In Social Dilemmas., Jason R Bush

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

People make decisions every day that have significant impact on others. The current experiment investigates the learning and decision-making processes involved when small groups confront a complex social dilemma under different learning conditions designed to imitate common educational interventions used in classrooms and non-laboratory settings. Participants (N=96) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the Explore-First condition (n=32), participants played one round of a simulated social dilemma board game before receiving a lesson on social dilemmas, then played a second round. In the Lesson-First condition (n=32), participants received the lesson before playing …