The Effects of Continuous Live Feedback on Group Performance

Twelve Italian undergraduate students participated in a "Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game" (IPDG), divided in 4 groups of 3 players: half of them received timely feedback on the automatic sum of their earnings, round after round, whereas this information was hidden to the other half, whose decisional outcomes were nevertheless visible at all times, but their automatically calculated sum was not. Initial findings seems to support increased cooperative contingencies among the latter two groups when compared to the first two, whose decisional strategy displayed a higher frequency of competitive (or defective) behaviors. The effects represented by the metacontingency is described in the discussion section, as well as further developments in terms of lines of investigation.