Which pairs coordinate and which do not?
Abstract
Humans can coordinate their behavior with others through interactions; however, not all pairs can coordinate. From the perspective of predictive processing, different social interaction patterns can be explained by the diversity of individuals' belief strength. To investigate the relationship between coordination and belief strength, we conducted an interaction experiment using a Simon electronic light-sequence game in which participants memorize the order of color sequences. The results of our experiment, involving 23 pairs of participants, revealed diversity in the degree of coordination within pairs and the strength of belief between individuals. Our analysis supports the hypothesis that belief strength explains the success or failure of coordination: Coordination fails when both individuals in a pair have weak beliefs, whereas it succeeds when one person becomes the leader and the other becomes the follower because of the different strengths of their beliefs. Our findings suggest that predictive processing theory can be applied to situations involving social interactions.