Social information as a cue for tacit coordination

Abstract

Whereas earlier research on tacit coordination has mainly demonstrated how people use environmental information to achieve coordination success, the present research investigates how people tacitly coordinate their decisions by using information about the people they have to coordinate with (i.e., social information). We demonstrate that when people have to tacitly match their decisions, they focus on the characteristics they share with one another to achieve coordination success (Study 1). By contrast, when mismatching is required, people focus on interpersonal differences as a basis for coordination (Study 2). Moreover, we show that social information only facilitates coordination when there is a clear association between such information and the available choice options (Study 3). Finally, in matching situations, people prefer co-players who are similar to themselves, whereas, in mismatching situations, people prefer dissimilar co-players (Study 4). These results provide converging evidence that social information can serve as an effective cue for tacit coordination.