Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

One distinguishing feature of human social intelligence is our capacity to flexibly coordinate complex behaviors, such as when working together to prepare a meal. What cognitive or motivational processes make such joint action possible? Here, we investigate the role that a \emph{preference to enmesh behaviors} plays in human coordination using a novel two-player virtual baking paradigm. Participants could either independently bake bread by bringing their own water and flour, or jointly bake bread by bringing only water or only flour to share. Depending on the ingredient options available, trials in our experiment could correspond to either the classic Prisoner's Dilemma, in which acting jointly is disincentivized by the payoffs, or a "Friend's Dilemma", in which acting jointly is neither incentivized nor disincentivized (though it remains risky since one's partner might not share). Formal analysis of equilibria and dyadic learning dynamics indicate that people work together even when there is no incentive to do so. These results provide preliminary evidence that a motivation to enmesh behaviors with social partners supports successful coordination.