Playing games to improve conceptual understanding and cooperation in social dilemmas.

People make decisions every day that have significant impact on others. The current experiment investigates the learning and decision-making processes involved when small groups confront a complex social dilemma under different learning conditions designed to imitate common educational interventions used in classrooms and non-laboratory settings. Participants (N=96) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the Explore-First condition (n=32), participants played one round of a simulated social dilemma board game before receiving a lesson on social dilemmas, then played a second round. In the Lesson-First condition (n=32), participants received the lesson before playing the game. In the Contrast condition (n=32), participants received the lesson without playing the board game. Participants in the Explore-First condition performed significantly better on a quiz assessing their conceptual understanding of social dilemmas and transfer to new dilemmas. Individuals in the Explore-First condition also found the lesson more interesting, and generally showed greater acceptance of public policies intended to improve ecological sustainability. Educational interventions to improve cooperation in social dilemmas may benefit from an initial exploratory phase, where individuals experience critical features of the problem before being taught about them