Tacit coordination in interdependent relationships

The purpose of the present study was to examine the tacit coordination in interdependent relationships between two persons. Subjects, 320 college students, were asked to complete the questionnaire in supposed interaction situations. It was shown that in the correspondent-similar condition, in which each person knew that another person was doing the same, they could concert their expectations with each other without aids of communication or prior arrangement. The degree of coordination depended on the clue that the situation offered. In the control condition, a similar type of coincidence sometimes appeared in individual choices. In correspondent-complementary and noncorrespondent conditions, in which either one or both person tried to act differently from the other, they made their choices more diverge than in the correspondent-similar condition, but in some cases similar coincidence of choices occurred. It was concluded that the situational clues led to high degree of expectatory coordination with others, and also brought about a bias in choices.