Block Two: Team solutions

Block Two followed the same general structure as Block One, in that there were seven instances of the TDP, which participants completed in sequence without information on the performance

of others. In Block Two, however, participants were formed into teams of three, who jointly completed one instance of the TDP in each round.

We used the performance of participants in Block One to assign the participants into teams. The 18 participants in a session were grouped into two cohorts of nine based on the desk at which they were seated. Within each cohort, we ranked the nine participants in order of their average score across the seven rounds of Block One. Participants were then assigned to teams using the schema outlined in Table 1.1. For example, participants of rank 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 were allocated to team 1, 2, 3, 3, 2, and 1 respectively. This “serpentine” system attempts roughly to equalise the average skill of participants across teams, as measured by their relative performances in Block One, such that no team is comprised of only high ranked or low ranked participants.

Table 1.1: Schema for assigning participants to teams based on their Block One performances.

Member ID Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

Purple Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3

Yellow Rank 6 Rank 5 Rank 4

Indigo Rank 7 Rank 8 Rank 9

At this point, teams were assigned to one of the three treatments: elected leader (EL), appointed leader (AL), or no leader (NL). We rotated which team number, as given by Table 1.1, was assigned to which treatment, according to Table 1.2. There were equal numbers of cohort types EAN, ANE, and NEA.

Table 1.2: Schema for allocation of teams to treatment, by cohort type.

EAN cohort ANE cohort NEA cohort

Team 1 EL AL NL

Team 2 AL NL EL

Team 3 NL EL AL

Before the start of Block Two, the experimenter read aloud instructions introducing the rules of the team version of the TDP. Block Two began with a series of three screens. The content of the three screens varied based upon the treatment the participant’s team was assigned to. The verbal instructions made no mention of a team captain; therefore participants were unaware of the existence of other treatments within the same session.

After the instructions, the first screen of Block Two introduced the organisation of the team, including that each member of the team would receive a colour name as their identity for the duration of Block Two. Teams assigned to the elected leader (EL) treatment additionally saw a message that on the subsequent screen, they would have an opportunity to select a “team captain”. Teams assigned to the appointed leader (AL) treatment saw a message that a captain

would be appointed for their team. It was explained that the team captain’s role would be to click a button to start each round.

On the second screen of Block Two, players learned their colour names, assigned per the schema in Table 1.1, and also observed the average scores of all three members of their team in Block One. The best-performing member of each team, as measured by Block One perfor- mance, was Player Purple; the second-best performing member Player Yellow, and the worst- performing member Player Indigo. Teams assigned to the elected leader (EL) treatment addi- tionally had a pair of radio buttons at the bottom of the screen, captioned “Please vote for your team captain.” There were two candidate, Player Purple and Player Yellow, which the candidate receiving the majority of votes to be named as captain.5

On the third screen of Block Two, teams in EL learned which candidate had been selected as the captain. Each cohort included exactly one EL and one AL team. The third screen of Block Two also revealed the captain to the AL team. The AL captain was always selected to be the same colour as the successful candidate for the EL team in the same cohort. In this way, the distribution of the relative performance of the team captain in Block One is comparable between EL and AL.

Figure 1.5: A chat in progress, for Player Yellow. This team has a captain, Player Purple, indi- cated by the (C) label in the chat window.

Following the three preliminary screens, each team completed seven instances of the TDP. Each round began with a chat stage, as in Figure 1.5. At the left of the screen was the map. Checkpoints on the map were displayed as rectangles labeled with letters of the alphabet.6 _At

5_{By restricting to two candidates, we ensure that ties were not possible. Brandts et al. (2014) used a voting}

mechanism in which all members of 6-member groups could vote for any member, including themselves; ties were broken at random. In Levy et al. (2011) group members (in a 4-member group) could vote for other participants only; they reported that ties did not occur.

6_{We used letters to label the checkpoints to offer a convenient shorthand for participants to exchange possible}

the right was a chat window. Messages entered into the chat box were sent immediately to the other two members of the team. For teams in the EL and AL treatments, the member designated as the team captain was indicated with a (C) notation, e.g. “Player Purple(C)” or “Player Yellow(C)”. The chat phase lasted 90 seconds; a countdown on the screen indicated how much time was remaining in this phase.

The Decision Screen followed the chat phase. The Decision Screen followed the same structure as the Decision Screen from Block One, except each participant could input only one journey. The three team members entered their journeys simultaneously, without knowing what journeys the other members of their team were making. The alphabet labels were removed from the checkpoints in the Decision Screen. So, if teams did use the labels to discuss possible journey allocations, participants had to commit to memory which labels corresponded to which checkpoints before passing from the chat phase to the Decision Screen. A typical Decision Screen with a route input is shown in Figure 1.6(a).

After all three team members completed their journeys, the next screen displayed the com- posite route consisting of the three journeys of the team members, as in Figure 1.6(b). As in the individual TDP Decision Screen, the number of checkpoints visited on each journey and each journey’s distance were tabulated at left. In addition, the number of omitted checkpoints was presented.

After the composite route was shown, the team’s Score Card for the round was displayed. This Score Card was identical in structure to the individual TDP Score Card from Block One (Figure 1.2). It likewise included question marks for the results of the other team, as the perfor- mance of the other team was only revealed at the end of the Block.

After completing the seventh and final round, but before seeing the results of the Block, participants completed some questions which captures (over)confidence.