Cooperation in Board Games

Abstract

Cooperative or collaborative processes are key in many activities. Some authors distinguish cooperation from collaboration, based on the interpersonal dynamics between the participants. These distinctions, however, superimpose a simple dichotomy over a complex reality. In order to explore several different cooperation dynamics, we offered an extension course, in which the enrolled participants played several cooperative board games. In this paper, we have used Distinctive Features (DF) vectors to represent these games’ main characteristics. One of our results is, accordingly, a DF inventory which can be used to represent cooperative games. The other result is a better understanding of interpersonal dynamics in cooperative environments.