Some conditions affecting the choice to cooperate or compete.

The experimenter put two adults in the same room. Each person had a button.

Pressing could earn nickels. One schedule paid if both people pressed together. The other paid only to the faster presser.

The size of the nickels changed across days. The question: would people pick the cooperative schedule when it paid just a little more?

When cooperation delivered 6¢ and competition delivered 3¢, both players chose to work together.

Even though competition could give one player bragging rights, the tiny extra cash made teamwork the favorite.

Hirsch et al. (2016) moved the same idea into a fourth-grade gym class. They told the whole class they had to hit a group goal to earn extra recess. Engagement jumped, showing the lab result travels to real kids.

Schneider et al. (1967) ran an earlier lab study. They paired shock with reinforcement and saw choice swing the other way. The difference: shock is not a reinforcer, so the correlation felt bad. Schmitt (1976) kept everything positive and got cooperation.

Decasper et al. (1977) followed one year later with pigeons. Birds that had been reinforced for pecking during single sounds later preferred a sound-plus-light combo. Both papers say the same thing: history plus slightly better payoff steers later choice.

You can nudge partners, siblings, or classmates toward teamwork without lectures. Just make the cooperative response pay a hair more than the competitive one. Next time you run a group contingency, set the team goal so each child earns one extra token compared with going solo. You should see more helping and less hogging.