"It is reinforced by the experimenter that you are out to make as much money as you can for yourself - the other person's profit is not a concern." ... "In fact it turns out that your condition, of bilateral threat, made the least profit when both participant's scores were added up. The next most profitable was the unilateral threat condition, while the most profitable overall was the no-threat condition."

So profits are added up in the end. And yet, the protagonists were told that only their own profit is going to be of any concern after all. I guess this lets them put blinders on when it comes to over-all profitmaking.

A question arises: What we embark on in the beginning: the total sum of profit or the split profit of one person and another, or even the amount of difference between the two? - how does it affect openhearted/-minded communication (strategies)?

If I curb the advantages of another person I might be tempted to totally disregard any drawbacks i am going to suffer myself. In capitalist mentality, the only aim seems to be, too: rid yourself of any competitors or swallow them up by making as much profit as you can, at least more than they are able to make.

By the way, this reminds me of another experiment, namely the one about group behavior and "us vs. them", i.e. the comparing mind which gets us people into trouble time and time again.

The gates which provide the threat of sole control of that scarce resource are not features of the competitive relationships "encouraged by capitalism" but of economic monopolies, which are *discouraged by capitalism* and more often seen in socialist command-based economies.

The only limited resource that the trucking companies in the experiment must compete for, since they are making their money from separate sources, is the "short route" that would increase their profits.

In reality of course businesses compete for many scarce resources. Customers are one possible shared resource like the shortest route (and no company has a "longer alternative route" to customers so they are a necessity, not a profit booster): the gates amount to an absolute control over who can use the resource, and the mere existence of those "gates" means the resources can't allocate themselves. When those resources are customers, they are powerless and are likely to get a bad deal.

So really my concern with the first conclusion is the vagueness and I would say it's more correct to conclude that: if two parties are competing for a beneficial (but not essential) limited resource, and have non-conflicting goals (i.e. they're not directly competing for income) then they would both be better off if neither has any control over who can use that beneficial limited resource.

Because of my problems with the first conclusion, I would say it's obvious that the third and fourth conclusions are unjustified. For me, the second and fifth conclusions are the ones that work (and make you go duh!):

2: people don't always know what's good for them
5: threats can cost you more than they earn

Scenario 1: With verbal communication, the person on the other end is energetic, personable, and seems to genuinely desire the best for both fictional companies. Logic says this would encourage communication in your average social individual and therefore increase cooperation.

Scenario 2: The person with the other headset spends time antagonizing the other person, trash-talking, or on a lesser scale simply berating any ideas the other person presents as being stupid and selfish. Increase in competition decreases productivity.

I guess these aren't necessary, as there are seemingly reliable predictions to be made, but it'd still intrigue me.

You also say that "the researchers...are claiming no competiton exists."
Where do the researchers claim such a thing? I admit I don't have access to all of the original study, but in this article it's explicitly stated that "in this game you only have one starting point, one destination and one competitor" and that "you'll be playing a game against another participant" (emphasis mine). The article does state that this is an example of a non-zero-sum game, where one side's win does not necessarily mean a loss for the other, but that hardly excludes competition. And yes, the other person's profit "is not a concern," but their access to the middle road certainly is -- that was the whole point of the experiment. They "cooperated" only to the extent that they cut down on one another's interference with each other.
The first page of the original paper, available at http://www.jstor.org/pss/172878, states that one of the essential features of a bargaining situation -- i.e. what they were studying -- is that both parties recognize that they have "conflicting preferences" or "opposed interests" (Deutsch & Krauss 1962). (I cited my paraphrase. Please don't hit me.) According to their very own definition, the researchers would not have been able to study bargaining if the participants were not in conflict and/or did not believe that they were in conflict.

The "non-zero-sum" game classification does, however, mean that your example of a criminal robbing someone at gunpoint does not apply to this experiment or to the conclusions drawn from it. When a criminal directly robs another person, that's a "zero-sum" game: everything one person wins is at the direct expense of another person. It is also not a very good practical example of "real life". Most interactions and negotiations in real life do not involve being robbed or attacked at gunpoint by a criminal, unless your entire life is spent in Evening News World.

You state that the study "claims that the best outcome occurs when only one person has the greatest advantage". This is patently untrue: the study does not claim this. The article states: "One condition had unilateral threat - only one could threaten the other. And the final condition had no threat at all...the most profitable overall was the no-threat condition." (emphasis mine.) And in the "experiment 3" section: "remember the no-threat condition has the best outcomes". The unilateral condition did not have the best outcome.
(I suppose Deutsch and Krauss' unilateral power bias must have failed them there.)

It is also not true that the "unilateral threat" situation invests one person with all the power. The person without the "threat gate" still has some power to ruin things for both sides by parking their truck in the one-lane road and stubbornly refusing to budge. This merely weakens Mister Big (forcing use of the alternate route, with sharply reduced revenue) while crippling Joe Average (forcing no movement whatsoever, with no revenue), so it would be kind of like a union strike. This would also have been true of the "no-gates" situation, except both sides would have been Joe Average, with no Mister Big at all.

The gates, from what I understand, merely add a way for you to weaken your rival (to "teach them a lesson", to show them that you wouldn't be bullied, to show them that you were willing to bully them to get what you wanted) without completely crippling yourself -- which might be why, when both sides were provided with them, it became all too easy for them to become jackasses about the middle road ("if you won't let me use it, fine, neither can you"), with neither side willing to back down and make painful but potentially rewarding concessions. That doesn't make them "morons". It makes them irrational, i.e. normal.

It claims to measure cooperation and bargaining. It claims that the participants are not in competion with each other. It claims that the participants realize they are not in competition with each other.

But that cannot be true. From this sentence: "In the first of 20 trials, both you and your rival shut your gates, forcing both trucks onto the alternative route."

If the participants do not feel as if they are in competition with each other, then there is no reason to impose a handicap on anyone else by locking the other person out of the gate. They would simply wait their turn on the one-way road, or both go in the same direction at the same time.

I do not understand this experiment; it makes no sense to me. If the goal is to make as much money in the shortest period of time regardless of what the other person does or doesn't do, then yes, the other person is merely an irritant -- not a direct competitor.

Why the assumption that an irritant does not equal competition? In practical applications, this distinction becomes meaningless. The guy who makes it difficult for me to do my work, without any benefit to him whem my job becomes harder, is as much of a problem to me as the guy who does receive a benefit from making my job harder. I don't care what his motives are; the result to me is the same. So the participants in this study ARE in competition with each other.

Perhaps that is merely a minor nitpik, but I'm not so sure. After all, the researchers claim to exempt competition from the framework of the study.

That is one problem, but there is another.

Obviously the most efficient way to maximize one's own profit is to share the space, but none of these morons want to do that initially. They want to make life difficult for the other person just for the sheer fun of it. Each participant is assuming that the other person will abuse the power in that person's possession; and in order to mitigate this situation, each participant decides to abuse his own. Remember, it is the researchers who are claiming no competiton exists.

The premise of this study isn't examplified in real life under practical applications. If a criminal threatens me with a gun, he may back down when I brandish my own weapon. Or he may choose to escalate and shoot at me. Or he may choose to not approach me at all, if he realizes that I am armed.

We know from many criminal justice studies that criminals prefer attacking unarmed opponents; rarely do they choose to attack an equal when a less armed person has the identically desired object.

This study claims that the best outcome occurs when only one person has the greatest advantage -- hogwash in real life. When only one group has the advantage, other groups tend to get screwed.

In the unilateral example, the person with all the power wins the most profit, and the loser still does okay. We are supposed to forget that the winner in this particular scenario has no motive for inflicting additional harms onto the other person.

Where is that study on cognitive dissonance? The researchers wanted to prove that it is okay for one group to have all the power, and so they hope we only look at the winner -- and forget that the loser even exists. Which is why someone mentions capitalism; we're supposed to forget all about the people oppressed by megarich superpower corporations.