Contending “signals” in coalition choice¹

This research was conducted with the support of grant SOC 72–05245 awarded to the second author by the National Science Foundation. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the West Coast Conference for Small Group Research, April 7, 1976, Los Angeles, and at the annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, March 11–13, 1977, New Orleans.

During negotiations for coalitions, each actor presumably searches his decision environment for organizing principles—signals—which, if present, would turn the negotiations in his favor. With only one prominent signal, we expect it to determine the nature of agreements, but things may be different with multiple signals. Data from four studies of a weighted‐majority game, two using only relative status of winnings in the game as the incentive (i.e., rank position of points accumulated) and two also using monetary reward as an incentive, are analyzed. Both relative status and resources (weights) were apparent to subjects in the studies. Results for coalitions and for payoffs show that a theory based on resources as the signal and one based on status as the signal both separately achieve success in the same bodies of data. As expected, the status‐signal theory better predicted coalitions in the two status‐reward studies, and the resource‐signal theory better predicted in the monetary‐reward studies. However, in all four studies, a two‐signal model which accounts for the reinforcing effects of signals achieves greater success. This indicates the importance of analyzing actors’ adoption of signals into their decision process, particularly in multisignal environments.

Notes

This research was conducted with the support of grant SOC 72–05245 awarded to the second author by the National Science Foundation. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the West Coast Conference for Small Group Research, April 7, 1976, Los Angeles, and at the annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, March 11–13, 1977, New Orleans.