COOPERATION IN INTERGROUP, N-PERSON, AND 2-PERSON GAMES OF CHICKEN

The authors introduce a new team game, the intergroup chicken game, to model intergroup conflicts involving bilateral threats (e.g., militar y conflicts, industrial disputes). The group that wins the game is the one that competes while the other group yields, and the benefits asso ciated with winning (e.g., territory, higher wages) are public goods f or the members of that group. However, a failure to yield on the part of both groups leads to an outcome (e.g., war, strike) that is disastr ous to all the players. The authors report an experiment in which an i ntergroup chicken game with two players on each team was compared to a two-person chicken game and a (single-group) four-person chicken game . The games were played repeatedly, and each round was preceded by a s ignaling period. Results showed that subjects were more competitive (a nd, consequently, less efficient) in the intergroup chicken game than in either the two-person or the four-person chicken game.