Switching from competition to sharing or cooperation at large response requirements: competition requires more responding.
Kids drop competition and choose cooperation once the work required to compete gets too high.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four high-school students sat in a lab with two levers each.
They could press for their own points (competition) or press to share points with a partner (cooperation).
The catch: every 100 points they wanted, the required lever presses jumped higher.
Researchers watched when kids would stop competing and start sharing.
What they found
When the fixed-ratio climbed past 100 responses, three pairs ditched competition and shared.
Total lever presses dropped by half for those three pairs.
One pair kept competing; they ended up pressing almost twice as much for the same payoff.
Effort, not rules, flipped the social game.
How this fits with other research
Asaro et al. (2023) later saw the same flip in an elementary playground.
They used interdependent group contingencies to make kids boost recess activity; cooperation won again.
Deluty (1976) looks opposite at first glance—higher punishment on one lever drove kids away.
Both studies show the same rule: when a response gets costly, people switch to the cheaper path.
Tyrer et al. (2009) added that bigger reinforcers stretch the breakpoint; our 1975 kids would probably have competed longer for jumbo rewards.
Why it matters
You can let effort do the policing.
Arrange tasks so competitive routes grow harder and cooperative routes stay easy.
Students will slide into sharing without extra prompts or prizes.
Try it during group math sheets, token boards, or PE relays—watch the lever called teamwork become the favorite.
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Join Free →Start a partner task with a rising response requirement for solo points; keep the shared-point requirement low and steady—then count how fast they start helping each other.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two pairs of high-school students matched-to-sample for money. On each trial, a subject could either respond on one lever to take the matching-to-sample problem himself (taking response) or respond on a second lever to give the problem to his coactor (giving response). The first subject to complete the response requirement determined the distribution of the problem. Competition maximizes the amount of responding over trials, i.e., both subjects make taking responses on each trial. Sharing and cooperation minimize responding: only one subject makes a taking response (sharing) or a giving response (cooperation) on each trial, and the subjects alternate responding such that there is an equitable distribution of responses and reinforcers over trials. Large increases in the fixed-ratio response requirement to distribute problems produced: (1) a switch from competition to sharing or cooperation, (2) the expected concomitant change from inequitable to equitable distributions of reinforcers, and (3) a reduction in the amount of responding for three of the four subjects. Previous animal research has shown that large response requirements may have aversive properties. Switching from competition to sharing or cooperation at large response requirements allows a reduction in responding and, at the same time, a moderate number of reinforcers for each subject.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1975 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1975.24-343