Theory and Decision (2019) 87:123–146

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-019-09692-w

Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination

problems?

Swee-Hoon Chuah1 · Robert Hoffmann1 · Jeremy Larner2

Published online: 6 March 2019

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019

Abstract
Does greater knowledge help or hinder one’s ability to coordinate with others? While
individual expertise can reveal a suitable focal point to converge on, ‘blissful’ igno-
rance may systematically bias decisions towards it through mere recognition. Our
experiment finds in favour of the former possibility. Both specific and general knowl-
edge are significantly associated with success in four of five coordination problems
as well as over all. Our analysis suggests that more knowledgeable participants are
better able to identify focal decision alternatives because (1) they are aware of more
such alternatives and (2) possess more relevant information about each.

Keywords Coordination · Information · Curse of knowledge · Focal points ·

Recognition

1 Introduction

Next to cooperation, coordination is a fundamental type of collective action problem

(Abele and Stasser 2008; Thomas et al. 2014). In coordination problems, decision
makers receive the highest available payoffs when they choose the same decision

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-

019-09692-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

B Robert Hoffmann
robert.hoffmann@rmit.edu.au
Swee-Hoon Chuah
sweehoon.chuah@rmit.edu.au
Jeremy Larner
Jeremy.Larner@nottingham.ac.uk

1 Behavioural Business Lab, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University, 445
Swanston Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia
2 Nottingham University Business School, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK

123
124 S. Chuah et al.

alternative as others. Economic applications include technological standards (Shapiro

and Varian 1999; Arthur 1989), conventions (Sugden 1989; Rubinstein 2000), net-
work externalities (Abramson 2005) and the business cycle (Cooper and John 1988).
Coordination is difficult in theory because decision makers can effectively converge
on any alternative and, therefore, may become stuck in an infinite regress of mutual
outguessing.
A number of coordination mechanisms have been proposed in the literature. When
decisions makers are able to communicate then an agreement on one of many decision
alternatives is in everyone’s interest (Cooper et al. 1994). When decision makers can
learn from the decisions others made previously then following the majority decision
can create convergence (Kandori et al. 1993). Finally, decision makers can tacitly
converge if there is payoff dominance, i.e., a decision alternative that, if universally
adopted, entails higher payoffs for all (Harsanyi and Selten 1988; Van Huyck et al.
1990). To illustrate these three mechanisms, people can converge on one of alternative
technological standards if they are able to communicate and agree, if they are able to
observe and follow the standard most others are using or if there is one standard that
has inherent advantages for everyone.
In practice, decision makers can coordinate surprisingly well even when none of
these mechanisms are available. In these “pure” coordination problems, no equilib-
rium affords higher payoffs; there is no possibility of communication between decision
makers or opportunity to learn from their previous interactions. In his seminal analysis,
Schelling (1960, p. 54–57) presents different such problems including (among others)
naming either heads or tails, circling a number or shape among those presented, select-
ing a meeting place and time in New York City or in a department store after spouses
lose each other. Payoffs result from choosing the same as others. Mehta et al. (1994)
report the first formal experiments with such problems including naming any number,
day, year, flower, colour, car manufacturer, British city and boy’s name. To explain
participants’ high coordination success, these and other authors (see Janssen 1998, for
an overview) further develop Schelling’s (1960) idea of focal points or salience, where
certain alternatives are prominent or stick out because they possess a shared cultural or
psychological significance. In this paper we examine, we believe for the first time, the
effect of knowledge and information on coordination. Because coordination on focal
points is based on common knowledge, the degree to which individuals know decision
alternatives may affect their coordination success. The examples studied by Schelling
(1960), Mehta et al. (1994) and others as well as naturally occurring coordination
problems differ in terms of whether or not decision makers know all possible alterna-
tives and, therefore, equilibria. We classify these as either open-form or closed-form
coordination problems. Selecting items from a list that is presented to or indepen-
dently known by participants are closed-form coordination problems. Selecting heads
or tails, any day of the year, a number or a shape from among presented ones belong to
this category. The decision maker has full awareness of all alternatives open to her. In
contrast, when there are no presented alternatives, selecting a place to meet, a city, a
boy’s name or car manufacturer are open-form problems because there are a multitude
of options and knowledge of these differs between participants.1

1 Mehta et al. (1994, p. 666, 671) call these “one-ended questions”.

123
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination… 125

Our motivation is that while coordination problems with asymmetric information

are common in practice they have been relatively neglected in the literature. Open-form
coordination problems are interesting and special because the different knowledge
decision makers have may affect their coordination success. This effect may go either
direction (Hargreaves Heap et al. 2017). In the traditional view greater knowledge
enhances decision making success. However, the opposite may be true in coordina-
tion games. For example, Hargreaves Heap et al. (2017) find that coordination is higher
when choice alternatives are not presented to experimental participants. An explana-
tion may come from recent literature that identifies knowledge curses in a number of
other economic settings (for an overview see Chuah et al. 2018). Ignorance may be
bliss in pure coordination problems if it systematically narrows the choice set towards
focal alternatives and avoids overestimating others’ knowledge. We are interested in
the empirical question whether knowledge is a curse or rather a blessing under these
conditions. We examine both possibilities using an experiment. The next section out-
lines the research background and questions. Section 3 outlines our method. Results,
their discussion and brief conclusions are presented in Sects. 4, 5, and 6, respectively.

2 Coordination and information

What is the effect of individual knowledge of decision alternatives in open-form coor-

dination problems? Conventional wisdom and traditional economic theory suggest
that in a range of settings, better information (about available alternatives, outcomes,
their values and likelihoods) allows for better decision making. However, experiments
have demonstrated different ways in which knowledge may be cursed (Camerer et al.
1989). For example, participants with hindsight often overestimate the likelihood or
predictability of past events (Fischhoff and Beyth 1975). When making judgments,
participants fail to sufficiently adjust from pieces of information they are presented
(e.g., Camerer et al. 1989) including patently arbitrary cues (Ariely et al. 2003). Greater
knowledge can make it harder for decision makers to take the perspective of less knowl-
edgeable ones (Birch 2005, p. 26) because of a general human tendency to impute what
others know from one’s own knowledge (Nickerson 1999).
In the following we examine these alternative effects (knowledge as bliss or curse)
in the context of open-form coordination problems. Here, because alternatives are
not presented, decisions are made based on actively bringing possible ones to mind
and selecting among them to match what other decision makers are believed to be
choosing concurrently. As a result, the choice set of each decision maker is limited
by their own knowledge. Further, when choosing from this set decision makers may
consider what decision alternatives others know and vice versa. For example, the lost
spouse in Schelling’s example may instead be looking for a child or foreign visitor with
less or different local knowledge of the department store and potentially a different
and unshared understanding of its salient features.

123
126 S. Chuah et al.

2.1 Coordination and recognition

Experiments have shown that greater knowledge can harm decisions in different ways
including the hindsight bias (Biais and Weber 2009) and anchoring effects (Ariely et al.
2003). Conversely, lesser knowledge can improve decision making if the knowledge
lack is related to the success criterion (Goldstein and Gigerenzer 1999, 2002; Pachur
et al. 2016). Experimental participants from the U.S. and Germany were asked to
determine which American city out of San Diego or San Antonio has more inhabitants.
While only two-thirds of the Americans guessed correctly, all Germans did so. The
Germans, unlike Americans, benefitted from the fact that lacking recognition of one
alternative (San Antonio) is connected to the criterion (city population): “Ignorance is
beneficial if it is correlated with what one wishes to infer” (Goldstein and Gigerenzer
1999, p. 44).
Similarly, ignorance of decision alternatives may promote success in open-form
coordination problems if it is systematically related to choosing focal alternatives. For
example, the “prominence or conspicuousness” of a decision alternative may make it
more likely that it is generally used as a focal point (Schelling 1960, p. 57–58) but also
that it is known by a given decision maker. In this way lesser knowledge biases towards
focal alternatives. As a result, decision makers in open-frame coordination problems
(either choosing randomly or according to recognition) have a higher probability of
success the smaller is their choice set. In other words, if decision makers choose the
most recognised decision alternative from their own choice set with less than certainty
then, ceteris paribus, the size of this set is inversely related to coordination success.
This curse of knowledge in coordination problems, therefore, hinges on the use
of recognition as a focal point. We use the term recognition to describe a decision
alternative’s well-knownness, i.e., the percentage of decision makers who could inde-
pendently name it. Note there is a difference between this active sense of recognition
and (passively) recognising an alternative when presented.
A number of authors have proposed recognition as a source of salience (e.g.,
Cartwright 2014, p. 264). According to Sugden (1995, p. 546), cultural and social
commonalities may suggest a focal point based on how frequently different alterna-
tives are mentioned within the group of decision makers. For example, choosing Grand
Central Station in Schelling’s New York problem provides a suitable focal point as the
best-known location to decision makers with differing knowledge of the city. Being
the most well-known confers salience even though it is no more unique a characteristic
than being the second or third most well known. The reason is that expected utility
maximisation requires choosing the most common alternative because frequency dis-
tributions are commonly skewed such that the frequency of the nth most common item
is inversely proportional to n (Zipf 1949; Ijiri and Simon 1977). The difference in
frequency between items becomes increasingly small as we move down the frequency
ranking, making correct identification harder. Abele et al. (2008; 2014) also suggest
that focal points require shared social knowledge, i.e., are chosen based on social and
cultural commonality among decision makers. When knowledge is asymmetric then
the most recognised alternatives have the highest prospects of successful coordination.
For example, Hargreaves Heap et al. (2017) suggest that participants in their coordi-

123
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination… 127

nation experiments are able to use more successful decision heuristics when choice
alternatives are not presented and, therefore, are not common knowledge.

2.2 Coordination and knowledge overimputation

Another potential knowledge curse in open-frame coordination games arises because

coordination involves perspective taking (Schelling 1960, p. 54) which in turn depends
on one’s own knowledge. To coordinate one needs to know what others know. Thomas
et al. (2014) found that the mutual recognition that something is known by all (in this
case the payoffs) raises coordination. Conversely, Curry and Jones Chesters (2012)
found that one dimension of self-reported autism (the ‘understanding others’ subscale)
is negatively related to success in coordination problems. The corollary is that overesti-
mating the knowledge others have harms one’s success in an open-frame coordination
problem. Schelling (1960) provides the following illustration:
Ordinary folk lost on a plane circular area may naturally go to the center to meet
each other; but only one versed in mathematics would “naturally” expect to meet
his partner at the center of gravity of an irregularly shaped area. (Schelling 1960,
p. 57–58).
In short, better-informed decision makers may fail to identify focal points due
to lacking perspective, e.g., if they overestimate the knowledge of others. Greater
knowledge can make it harder for decision makers to take the perspective of less
knowledgeable ones (Birch 2005; Birch and Bloom 2007) because of a general human
tendency to impute what others know from one’s own knowledge. There is evidence
that better-informed decision makers “over-impute” the knowledge of others. In a
series of experiments participants were tested regarding general knowledge (Nickerson
et al. 1987), knowledge of famous people or household objects (Fussell 1992) and
New York City landmarks (Fussell and Krauss 1991). Participants’ estimates of how
much others’ knew were biased in the direction of the extent of their own knowledge
(Krauss and Fussell 1991). More expert participants overestimate the knowledge of
others using their own as a reference point. As a result, knowledgable decision makers
may select non-focal decision alternatives more often because they overestimate the
extent to which they are commonly known.2

2.3 Coordination and expertise

Knowledge may also be a blessing rather than a curse in open-frame coordination

problems. One reason is that decision makers with wide knowledge of decision alter-
natives may be more generally expert in the problem’s domain because knowledge
is a prerequisite of general domain expertise (Larkin et al. 1980). Expertise may
enable better identification of decision alternatives that are focal to a given group
of decision makers. Hinds (1999) suggests that prima facie, experts should predict
2 Note that knowledge over imputation may instead be the product of rational Bayesian analysis to the
extent that experts draw inferences about the knowledge of others from what they themselves know (see
Dawes 1989). We thank the editor for pointing out this alternative account.

123
128 S. Chuah et al.

novices relatively well because of their own novice history and familiarity with the
novice’s problem domain. It may be that greater knowledge of a problem domain also
entails a better understanding of what is salient to a specific group of people or in a
particular instance of time. An expert’s encyclopaedic knowledge of a category may
include the unique features of each item or the extent to which they are known within
particular groups of people. In Schelling’s illustration, the department store security
officer may look for the lost child at the novelty toy store which the father was unaware
of.

3 The experiment

We conducted an experiment to test these alternative hypotheses, i.e., whether knowl-

edge of decision alternatives promotes or harms individuals’ ability to coordinate with
others.

3.1 Categories

In the experiment we use different categories to measure participants’ coordination as

well as knowledge shown in Table 1) and presented in the following order throughout:
current English Premier League soccer clubs (LEAGUE), plays of William Shake-
speare (SHAKE), animal signs of the Chinese Zodiac (ZODIAC), member nations of
the European Union excluding the UK (EUROPE) and Disney Princesses (DISNEY).
To obtain valid measures for both coordination and information the categories were
chosen based on three criteria. First, the categories involve different kinds of knowl-
edge because the relationship between coordination and knowledge may be sensitive
to the problem domain. To vary these domains the coordination problems were in
different categories similar to knowledge trivia games and quizzes (sport, politics,
literature and culture). Second, categories needed to be of finite membership to derive
knowledge measures that can be compared across categories (i.e., as percentage of
category items a participant could name). Third, categories were chosen to generate a
valid measure of coordination without ceiling or floor effects: When too many observa-
tions reach the maximum or minimum of a measurement scale then the determination
of the mean, changes in the variable concerned and correlations with other variables
are compromised. For instance, an invalid coordination measure would result if all or
no participants managed to coordinate in a particular category.

3.2 Tasks

The experiment consisted of several parts to measure each participant’s ability to coor-
dinate, knowledge about each of the categories and in general as well as demographics.
First, in the coordination part, participants were asked to name a valid item for each
of the five categories without being presented with a list of items. They were told they
would receive a payoff only if a randomly chosen and anonymous other participant in
the same session chose the same (see appendix).

123
 Table 1 Summary experimental data
Category LEAGUE SHAKES ZODIAC EUROPE DISNEY

Members 20 37 12 27 13
Panel 1: Coordination
1st most chosen member (% category focal  1) Manchester United (70.9) Romeo and Juliet (68.2) Dragon (26.5) France (55.0) Cinderella (51.0)
2nd most chosen member (%) Chelsea F.C. (8.6) Hamlet (12.6) Horse (13.9) Germany (26.5) Snow White (27.8)
3rd most chosen member (%) Arsenal F.C. (6.0) Macbeth (7.3) Monkey (11.3) Spain (8.6) Aurora (3.3)
4th most chosen member (%) Manchester City (4.0) Julius Caesar (3.3) Dog (9.9) Italy (2.6) Ariel (2.6)
Other members (%) 10.6 8.6 38.4 7.3 15.2
Mean category coordination 56.0 52.2 14.4 39.3 37.2
Panel 2: Knowledge (as % of category items)
Best-known member (%) Manchester United (89.4) Romeo and Juliet (84.1) Snake (63.6) France (98.0) Snow White (78.1)
Mean category knowledge 42.4 8.4 49.2 40.0 28.3
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination…

Mean category knowledge (if category focal 0) 32.4 6.8 46.2 40.5 22.0
Mean category knowledge (if category focal 1) 46.5 9.2 57.5 39.5 34.4
Category knowledge  0(N)(%) 12 (7.9) 10 (6.6) 25 (16.6) 5 (3.3.) 13 (8.6)
Category recognition  1 (N) (%) 134 (88.7) 133 (88.1) 10 (6.6) 126 (83.4) 118 (78.1)
Panel 3: Relationship between coordination and knowledge
Mann–Whitney U (p value) 1670.0 (0.005) 1832.5 (0.010) 1757.5 (0.050) 2759.5 (0.815) 1636.5 (0.000)
Point-biserial r − 0.212 − 0.189 − 0.157 0.024 − 0.374
Spearman ρ (p value) 0.289 (0.000) 0.230 (0.005) 0.357 (0.000) 0.071 (0.384) 0.334 (0.000)
Panel 4: Decision change
Category change  1 (%) 14 (9.3) 24 (15.9) 37 (24.5) 16 (10.6) 30 (19.9)
Coordination-improving change 5 15 32 10 27
Coordination-reducing change 9 9 5 6 3
Change to focal member 5 15 25 7 21
Knowledge of and change to focal member 4 11 13 6 13

123
129

Numbers (N) and percentages (%) are of participants

130 S. Chuah et al.

After the completion of the coordination part, we measured different aspects of

knowledge. First, participants were incentivised to list as many valid items of each the
categories as possible within 15 min and paid £0.50 for each valid item. They were
further told that invalid answers attracted a £0.50 penalty to discourage guessing (see
appendix for the question).
Next, participants were given the full category item lists, asked to name the five most
well known items for each category and to indicate what proportion of participants
they thought mentioned each of these items in the knowledge part. These beliefs about
the most recognised category items were made incentive compatible using Selten’s
(1998) quadratic scoring rule where more accurate beliefs received higher financial
rewards.
We then administered a within-participant treatment to make category knowledge
common. This enables us to compare coordination under both differing imperfect
and perfect knowledge. The treatment was a repeat of the coordination part except
participants were now in possession of the complete lists of items for all the categories
and asked whether they would want to change their decisions. They were told that, if
they decided to change, their new choice would be matched with their co-participant’s
original (rather than own final) answer.3 Where such changes took place the new
decision was used in conjunction with the chosen co-participant’s first decision for the
purposes of payout (see appendix for the relevant instructions).
Finally we administered a questionnaire to collect standard participant demograph-
ics as well as measures related to knowledge including overall academic performance
and self-assessment of own general knowledge. The relevant questions are shown in
the appendix. The questionnaire also included a control for the effects of intellectual
performance on coordination found in other studies (e.g., Curry and Jones Chesters
2012). We administered the abstraction subscale from the Shipley Institute of Liv-
ing Scale (SILS, Shipley 1940) to gauge inductive reasoning as a measure of fluid
cognitive performance. This is a standard instrument with twenty series completion
items where participants guess the next number (letter) following a series of num-
bers (letters) they are presented with. The scale is relatively simple to administer and
robust to differential language ability. We found scores to be statistically unrelated
to participants’ nationality and by native English status. We also included a question
about the decision criteria participants used in the coordination part. Participants were
presented with nine possible decision criteria and asked to rate agreement with each
on a 5-point Likert scale (see Table 4).

3.3 Implementation

We recruited 151 mostly undergraduate business students at a UK university using e-

mail invitations and class announcements for two simultaneous 1-h sessions. Of these
54% were female and 57% native English speakers. The average age was 21 years.
Both experimental sessions were conducted on 26 March 2014 by pen-and-paper in

3 The reason is that we wanted to test the effects of different individual knowledge rather than learning
in the participant group as a whole. Matching of co-participants’ final answers introduces a confounding
element of renewed second guessing that we wanted to avoid.

123
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination… 131

an exam hall environments with participants spaced sufficiently apart and controlled
to avoid collusion.4 The experiment was conducted in two separate rooms in different
buildings. Participants were told they would be matched with participants in the other
session. While participants were told nothing about the individual characteristics of
the other group they may have made inferences on the basis of the participants they
were able to observe in their own session.
Experimental earnings were paid out in person 1 week after the sessions. Partici-
pants were paid out for one of the five categories chosen at random. The payoff was
£10 for a match. Every participant also received a £5 show-up fee in addition to the
coordination and knowledge earnings.5 On average participants received £13.19 from
all parts of the experiment.

4 Results

The experiment generated different measures for each participant’s coordination suc-
cess and knowledge in the five categories. We now examine the potential relationships
between the two, i.e., whether and how category knowledge affects an individual’s
coordination success in that category. As outlined in Sect. 2, existing literature sug-
gests that this effect can be either positive or negative. In this analysis we also add
controls for demographic characteristics as well as general knowledge, academic suc-
cess and fluid intelligence.

4.1 Variables and summary statistics

We measure a participant’s category coordination in a given category as the probabil-

ity of a match, i.e., the percentage of other participants who chose the same alternative
in the coordination part of the experiment for a particular category. We measure par-
ticipant category knowledge as the percentage of valid category items stated in the
knowledge part of the experiment. We derived measures for overall coordination and
overall knowledge respectively as the unweighted averages over all categories. Fig-
ures 1 and 2 show histograms for both coordination and knowledge overall and for
each of the five categories.
Table 1 summarises the results. Panel 1 shows statistics relating to coordination suc-
cess which varies visibly between the five categories. Depending on category, between
26.5% (ZODIAC) and 70.9% (LEAGUE) of participants converged on the most fre-
quently chosen category item. These items were Manchester United (LEAGUE),
Romeo and Juliet (SHAKES), Dragon (Zodiac), France (EUROPE) and Cinderella
(DISNEY). Average coordination varied between 14.4% and 56.0% for the different
categories.
The second panel summarises the knowledge data. Interestingly the most well-
known alternatives were also the ones most frequently chosen in three of five categories
(Manchester United, Romeo and Juliet and France), and the second-most chosen in
4 Selected instructions are provided in the appendix.
5 At the time of the experiment £1 Sterling traded at 1.65 US$.

123
132 S. Chuah et al.

Fig. 1 Histograms for participants’ coordination overall (overall coordination) and for each of the categories
(category coordination)

one category (Snow White). On average participants could name between 8.4% and
49.4% of category items. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed both participants’
coordination (F (4, 600)  71.41, p <0.001) and knowledge (F (4, 600)  76.62,
p <0.001) differed significantly between categories.

4.2 Category knowledge

Did knowledge of category items affect individual ability to coordinate? We first

examined this main issue using a two-tail univariate approach. There are positive and
significant (at 95% or higher) correlations between category coordination and cate-

123
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination… 133

Fig. 2 Histograms for participants’ knowledge overall and for each of the categories

gory knowledge for all of the categories bar EUROPE (panel 3, Table 1).6 However,
the coordination data in Table 1 and histograms (Fig. 1) suggest that for each category,
coordination follows a bimodal distribution with the majority of participants clustered
at the high and low coordination ends of the spectrum.7 Calculating standard corre-
lation coefficients for category coordination is, therefore, inappropriate. As a result
we categorised participants in terms of whether, in a particular category, they chose
the most frequently chosen (or ‘focal’) item in the coordination part or not (category
focal  0 or 1). The relative proportions of those two groups for each category are
shown in the first row of the first panel of Table 1. Mann–Whitney tests reveal that

6 These correlations are robust to using only native British or non-British participants.
7 Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Shapiro–Wilk tests for category coordination in each of the five categories
have p ≤ 0.000.

123
134 S. Chuah et al.

focal group participants had significantly greater category-specific knowledge than

non-focal group participants in all categories but EUROPE (see panel 3, Table 1). We
also calculated effect sizes using point-biserial correlations. Effects vary (see Cohen
1988, p. 25) from small (0.1 ≤ r<0.24, LEAGUE, SHAKE, ZODIAC) to large effects
(r > 0.37, DISNEY) for all categories but EUROPE.

4.3 Robustness checks

We conducted regression analysis to check the robustness of these univariate results.

Table 2 displays logit results for category focal for each of the categories. Overall
the results support the significant positive associations between category knowledge
and choosing the focal alternative found in the univariate tests (panel 1). However,
in contrast to the previous results, category knowledge is now non-significant for
ZODIAC whereas EUROPE is significant.8
Result 1 In most categories, choosing the focal alternative for coordination is posi-
tively and significantly associated with knowledge of category items.
It is conceivable that the positive relationships between category knowledge and
coordination are driven by participants who knew no category items (see Fig. 2) and,
therefore, were unable to coordinate by definition. The second panel of Table 2 reports
regressions where observations where category knowledge  0 are excluded. Under
this restriction category knowledge remains significant in all of the four categories.
On the other hand the significance and the explanatory power of the models (in terms
of pseudo R2 ) declines.
Result 2 Result 1 is not driven by some participants’ inability to name (and therefore
choose) any valid category item.
We examined the relationship between category focal and knowledge controlling for
other factors that may influence coordination. For example Abele et al. (2014) suggest
that social characteristics affect common knowledge and therefore coordination. There
is also evidence of gender (Dufwenberg and Gneezy 2005), cross-cultural effects
(Jackson and Xing 2014) and the role of intelligence (Curry and Jones Chesters 2012)
in coordination experiments. We therefore add controls for participant age, gender,
fluid intelligence and English native speaker status (NATIVE  0 or 1). The models
are shown in the fourth panel of Table 2. Category knowledge is a significant positive
factor in all models controlling for other factors. None of the demographic controls
are significant bar age for LEAGUE. However, it should be noted that this measures
the inherent effects of participants’ individual characteristics on their own decisions
rather than their use as social identity information by others: Participants were told
nothing about the individual characteristics of others they were matched with. The

8 As explained, we used focal category as the dependent variable because of the bimodal distribution
of category coordination. To assess whether these results are sensitive for our chosen approach we also
performed ordinary least squares regressions for each of the categories with category coordination as the
dependent variable. The results also confirm that category knowledge is significant at the 95% level or
higher for every category but EUROPE.

123
 Table 2 Logistic regression results for focal decisions

Logistic Regressions for category focal

Category: LEAGUE SHAKES ZODIAC EUROPE DISNEY

Coef. P value Coef. P value Coef. P value Coef. P value Coef. P value

Panel 1: Basic models

Category knowledge 0.063 0.000*** 0.240 0.000*** 0.011 0.074 0.047 0.001** 0.080 0.000***
Constant − 0.382 0.272 − 0.197 0.589 − 0.877 0.013* − 0.657 0.166 − 1.537 0.000***
N 134 131 96 117 122
Pseudo R2 0.222 0.160 0.023 0.091 0.197
Panel 2: Models excluding zero knowledge
Category knowledge 0.042 0.000*** 0.151 0.007** 0.001 0.878 0.042 0.003** 0.071 0.000***
Constant 0.333 0.397 0.536 0.236 − 0.179 0.693 − 0.472 0.346 − 1.275 0.009**
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination…

N 126 120 85 115 116

Pseudo R2 0.120 0.065 0.000 0.071 0.147
Panel 3: Models accounting for decision change
Category knowledge 0.021 0.006** − 0.016 0.715 0.004 0.458 − 0.006 0.462 0.028 0.022*
Other knowledge − 0.006 0.722 0.083 0.000*** 0.028 0.044* 0.028 0.074 0.031 0.027*
SILS − 0.053 0.320 − 0.006 0.907 0.069 0.213 − 0.018 0.703 − 0.047 0.379
Constant 1.141 0.195 − 1.497 0.081 − 2.042 0.040* − 0.042 0.960 − 0.386 0.670
N 151 151 151 151 151
Pseudo R2 0.060 0.154 0.0347 0.016 0.064
Panel 4: models controlling for individual characteristics
Category knowledge 0.067 0.000*** 0.210 0.004** 0.252 0.005** 0.037 0.017* 0.074 0.001**
Other knowledge 0.051 0.032* 0.161 0.000*** 0.231 0.003** 0.102 0.000*** 0.122 0.000***
General knowledge 0.208 0.245 0.186 0.361 0.273 0.160 − 0.072 0.682 0.129 0.538

123
135
 Table 2 continued
136

Logistic Regressions for category focal

123
Category: LEAGUE SHAKES ZODIAC EUROPE DISNEY

Coef. P value Coef. P value Coef. P value Coef. P value Coef. P value

SILS − 0.186 0.040* − 0.133 0.098 − 0.020 0.855 − 0.037 0.559 − 0.045 0.613
Female 0.937 0.175 0.595 0.279 − 0.852 0.167 − 0.622 0.263 − 0.574 0.411
Age 0.284 0.028* − 0.097 0.524 0.044 0.776 0.013 0.921 − 0.285 0.092
Native − 0.639 0.270 − 0.003 0.996 1.201 0.115 − 0.178 0.739 − 1.218 0.051
Constant − 5.889 0.059 − 2.819 0.353 − 10.940 0.059 − 1.811 0.548 2.690 0.452
N 133 130 95 116 121
Pseudo R2 0.327 0.426 0.417 0.253 0.468
*p <0.05, **p <0.01, ***p <0.001
S. Chuah et al.
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination… 137

results for knowledge are significant under the control for fluid intelligence, which is
significant only for LEAGUE.
Result 3 Result 1 is not driven by participants’ individual characteristics such as
gender, age, fluid intelligence and native English speaker status.
Finally we examined whether these effects are sensitive to the nature of each of the
five categories. As seen, our categories differ in terms of average coordination suc-
cess, the number of items, familiarity to participants and coordination scope in terms
of uniquely salient items (Table 1). We used participant-level random effects logis-
tic regressions to re-estimate all the models in Table 2 after pooling the data across
all categories and adding separate controls for each, but LEAGUE using dummy
variables. The results are not displayed here but confirm the previous findings. Both
category knowledge and other category knowledge as the unweighted average of cate-
gory knowledge in all other categories, are significant (p <0.001) in every of the three
models. In addition, in all these models, the category dummies for ZODIAC and DIS-
NEY are significant negative influences on category focal whereas the other category
dummies remain non-significant.

4.4 General knowledgeability

Further independent variables were added to examine the underlying reasons for the
positive effect of category knowledge on coordination we found for all categories. One
possibility is that category knowledge is an indicator of general knowledgeability that
is responsible for this effect (see Sect. 2.3). We, therefore, added self-reported general
knowledge. In terms of convergent validity, i.e., the extent to which general knowledge
is related to theoretically similar constructs, its scores were significantly associated
with overall knowledge, ρ  0.200, p  0.014) and (marginally) self-reported aca-
demic performance (r  0.149, p  0.068). There were no significant effects for general
knowledge. We also constructed, for each category, other knowledge as the unweighted
average of category knowledge in all other categories as an objective measure of gen-
eral knowledge. Other knowledge was significant for all, but one category; knowledge
from other categories is indeed a relevant factor for coordination success.
Another way to look at the effect of general knowledgeability is to examine the rela-
tionship between coordination and knowledge aggregated over all categories. Figure 3
shows a scatter plot for each participant’s overall coordination by their overall knowl-
edge. The apparent positive correlation between them is highly significant (Spearman
ρ  0.421, p <0.001). Similarly, overall focal, the unweighted average of category focal
over all categories, is significantly and positively correlated with overall knowledge
(ρ  0.421; p <0.001). Again, we tested this relationship using regression analysis so
that extraneous variables can be added. The results are contained in Table 3. Model
1 confirms the univariate effect. Model 2 again examines whether the effect could be
driven by participants who knew no items of the five categories. We excluded obser-
vations where overall knowledge was below 20.9 As before the restriction does not
9 We use 20 as a conservative test, thereby excluding roughly one-third of observations. The same results
apply for lower values such as 10 and 5. Higher values reduce the sample size too much for meaningful
analysis.

123
138 S. Chuah et al.

Fig. 3 Scatter plot for participants’ coordination ability (overall coordination) by knowledge (overall knowl-
edge) over all categories. Fitted values shown as grey line

alter the significance of overall knowledge. Model 3 again adds control variables for
individual characteristics and general knowledge, all of which are non-significant bar
fluid intelligence. The effect for overall knowledge is robust to the addition of the
controls. Models 4–6 repeat these analyses with overall focal as the dependent vari-
able. The same findings apply except that native English status is significant. Overall
we find that the positive relationship between coordination and knowledge aggregated
over categories is stronger than for individual categories. This further suggests general
knowledgeability as an underlying influence, either in addition or instead of knowledge
of category items.

Result 4 In most categories and overall, choosing the focal alternative for coordi-
nation is positively and significantly associated with knowledge of items of other
categories, suggesting general knowledgeability may drive result 1.

4.5 Recognition

Our results so far suggest category-specific knowledge and category knowledgeability

are positively associated with coordination in open-form coordination problems. We
next examine to what extent the underlying reasons for these effects lie in participants’
willingness and ability to use recognition as a focal point. Participants’ responses to
the question about decision criteria are summarised in Table 4. They confirm the use
of recognition and popularity as a focal point more than any alternative criterion.
Almost three quarters of participants (72%) rated recognition highest or joint highest
among the rules. In contrast, conspicuousness, often associated with focal points in the

123
 Table 3 Regression results for overall coordination and focal decisions

DV: Overall coordination Overall focal

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Participants All Overall knowledge≥20 All All Overall knowledge≥20 All

Coef. P Coef. P Coef. P Coef. P Coef. P Coef. P

Overall knowledge 0.534 0.000*** 0.430 0.000*** 0.495 0.000*** 0.010 0.000*** 0.008 0.000*** 0.009 0.000***
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination…

General knowledge 0.706 0.248 0.013 0.301

SILS − 0.541 0.012* − 0.010 0.019*
Female 2.589 0.172 0.047 0.214
Age − 1.181 0.732 − 0.007 0.488
Native − 4.375 0.053 − 0.092 0.035*
Constant 21.861 0.000*** 25.856 0.000*** 35.760 0.001** 0.201 0.000*** 0.267 0.000*** 0.557 0.010*
N 151 137 150 151 137 150
R2 0.214 0.104 0.204 0.104
*p <0.05, **p <0.01, ***p <0.001

123
139
140 S. Chuah et al.

Table 4 Participant decision criteria (range: 1  strongly disagree to 5  strongly agree)

When the objective was to give the same answer as my co-participant, I chose an answer: Mean

That I thought is particularly well-known among people like my co-participant 4.55

That I thought is particularly popular among people like my co-participant 4.52
That I thought I might have in common in some way with people like my co-participant 3.83
That was the first one that came to my mind 3.74
That I recently came across in the news or other media 3.06
That is my personal favourite among the possible answers 2.83
That is somewhat different from the other possible answers, i.e., it stuck out in some way 2.25
That I think is lucky or auspicious 1.75
By chance, i.e., I chose at random 1.58

literature (Schelling 1960, p. 57), was a relatively unpopular decision criterion. The
reason may be that conspicuousness confers salience in closed rather than open-frame
coordination problems. When participants are presented with decision alternatives then
identifying the one(s) that stick out may be the best approach. However, when this
assessment is preceded by recollection and depends on knowledge, then recognition
may be more effective.
The use of recognition as a decision criterion suggests how knowledge may enhance
coordination: Greater knowledge may better enable participants to identify the most
well-known decision alternatives. The dummy variable category recognition (second
panel in Table 1) represents whether participants correctly identified the most recog-
nised item in each category by assigning the highest likelihood to that item in the
belief elicitation part of the experiment. How does knowledge affect a participant’s
ability to tell how recognised a decision alternative is? We performed regressions for
category recognition (Table 5). The results show that category-specific knowledge con-
tributes significantly in two categories (LEAGUE and DISNEY, see top panel). Adding
knowledge of other categories produces additional significant effects for SHAKE, but
self-reported general knowledge is non-significant (second panel). The joint effect
of knowledge for all categories is confirmed by models using aggregated knowledge
(bottom panel). Again all these effects are confirmed by repeating the same estimations
with data pooled over all categories. Category knowledge, other knowledge and overall
knowledge are significant in all three (p ≤0.001). Together these results suggest that
knowledge of various types enables participants to better use recognition as a deci-
sion criterion for coordination. In turn, identifying recognition enables participants
to choose the most focal decision alternative. χ 2 -tests evidence that a significantly
greater proportion of participants who correctly identified the most recognised items
(category recognition  1) also chose these for coordination (category focal  1) in
all categories but ZODIAC (p < 0.05 or lower for each).

Result 5 In most categories, the ability to identify the most recognised alternative is
positively and significantly associated with knowledge of different categories, suggest-
ing knowledge may drive result 1 through recognition.

123
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination… 141

Table 5 Logistic regression results for participants’ correct identification of most recognised decision alter-
natives

Logistic regressions for Category recognition

Category: League Shakes Zodiac Europe Disney

Coef. P Coef. P Coef. P Coef. P Coef. P

Models with Category-Specific Knowledge

Category 0.046 0.005** 0.075 0.219 0.005 0.408 0.020 0.161 0.039 0.003**
knowledge
Constant 0.711 0.091 1.441 0.002** − 2.918 0.000*** 0.864 0.111 0.285 0.434
N 151 151 151 151 151
Pseudo R2 0.137 0.022 0.004 0.021 0.059
Models accounting for other knowledge
Category 0.044 0.007** 0.045 0.446 0.007 0.349 0.022 0.139 0.037 0.006**
knowledge
Other 0.006 0.783 0.053 0.007** 0.039 0.074 0.005 0.807 0.023 0.148
knowledge
General 0.061 0.723 − 0.114 0.522 − 0.233 0.332 − 0.176 0.212 − 0.036 0.771
knowledge
Constant 0.006 0.783 0.053 0.007** 0.039 0.074 0.005 0.807 0.023 0.148
N 151 151 151 151 151
Pseudo R2 0.139 0.083 0.034 0.032 0.071
Models with overall knowledge
Overall 0.059 0.003** 0.067 0.004** 0.036 0.127 0.020 0.306 0.045 0.009**
knowledge
Constant 0.241 0.710 − 0.049 0.943 − 3.941 0.000*** 0.967 0.142 − 0.187 0.751
N 151 151 151 151 151
Pseudo R2 0.059 0.076 0.019 0.007 0.009
*p <0.05, **p <0.01, ***p <0.001

4.6 Perfect category knowledge

If this indirect effect of knowledgeability on coordination (via recognition) is cor-

rect then it should persist even if participants are given category-specific knowledge.
Our knowledge treatment allowed us to control the effect of category knowledge on
coordination success. The dummy variable category change measures if a participant
changed their coordination decision after being presented with the full list of cate-
gory items (see bottom panel of Table 1). Between around a tenth and a quarter of
participants made changes depending on the category.
We conducted regressions (third panel, Table 2), where the observations for the
dependent variable category focal reflect the changes participants made to their deci-
sions, i.e., their final coordination choices after being presented with a list of all
category items. The results show that prior category-specific knowledge remains sig-
nificant for LEAGUE and DISNEY. Prior knowledge of other categories is significant

123
142 S. Chuah et al.

for SHAKE, ZODIAC and DISNEY. Even when participants choose with full knowl-
edge of category items, their independent, prior knowledge of this and other categories
enhances their ability to choose the most focal category item. Again, we re-estimated
this model using pooled data across all categories and adding category dummies. Both
category knowledge (p  0.005) and other knowledge (p <0.001) are significant. Over-
all these results further support the indirect positive influence of knowledgeability on
coordination.
The decision change data also evidence an indirect rather than direct effect of
category-specific knowledge. In general participants changed when the presentation
of all category items made them realise their initial choice was not the most recognised
among them: χ 2 - tests showed for every category, a significantly lower proportion of
changing participants initially chose the focal alternative (p  0.000 for each category).
However, the reason for the initial incorrect choices was not ignorance of the most
recognised item. Fisher Exact χ 2 -tests also showed that knowledge of focal category
items was not different between the group of participants who made changes to their
decisions and those who did not, in every category (p ≥0.18). In all categories, more
than half of changing participants knew the focal alternative yet had not selected it
initially (Table 1, bottom row). Instead, the reason for the initial incorrect choices was
category knowledge. The changing group had significantly lower knowledge of every
category (p  0.003 or lower for each).
Result 6 In most categories, choosing the focal alternative for coordination is posi-
tively and significantly associated with (prior) knowledge of items of this and other
categories even when participants are given all of this category’s items, suggesting
general knowledgeability may drive result 1.
In short, while the typical changing participant knew of the most recognised cate-
gory item, she failed to select it because she did not have the wider category knowledge
to identify it as such. We speculate that category knowledge enables participants to
bring different alternatives to mind and to identify the most recognised ones by com-
paring them. Less knowledgable participants were unable to make such comparisons
to the same extent.10 This further supports that the effect of knowledge on coordina-
tion lies in the fact that better knowledge is associated with better ability to identify
recognised, focal alternatives. The positive effect of knowledge on coordination is,
therefore, indirect.

5 Discussion

We interpret the results from our analyses in the following way. First, we find no evi-
dence of a curse of knowledge in open-form coordination problems. On the contrary,
there is evidence of a significant positive effect of category item knowledge on coor-
dination. The effect is evident from different statistical tests using different dependent
variables both in univariate and regression analysis. The effect holds for a range of

10 Our experiment was not designed to examine the particular considerations participants engage in when
trying to coordinate.

123
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination… 143

individual categories that differ in terms of their size and the type of knowledge but
also over all categories. The effect is robust also with regard to relevant control vari-
ables and data restrictions. We found no evidence that the effect is down to the fact that
participants with no knowledge are, by the rules of the experiment, unable to coordi-
nate. Indeed, additional tests reveal that if we assign such participants a coordination
payoff equivalent to that a random choice would have generated (rather than zero) our
results are unaffected. On the other hand, effect size calculations and non-significant
effects for knowledge in some of the tests overall suggests a medium-size effect.
Overall we found that even when participants are given a list of category members,
their prior knowledge of these and other category items is positively associated with
coordination success, controlling for their fluid intelligence. What is the explanation of
the positive effect of knowledge on coordination? We found evidence for two under-
lying causes from the extraneous knowledge variables and the treatment we used.
The first is the role of general knowledgeability. Other knowledge was significant for
coordination in every category bar LEAGUE. Similarly, overall knowledge was more
strongly correlated with coordination than category-specific knowledge. This suggests
that the underlying influence may be a participant’s general knowledgeability, which
is in turn correlated with knowledge of a category’s items. Out of the 10 possible
bivariate correlations among category knowledge in the five categories, six are sig-
nificant at the 95% level of confidence. It may be that such knowledge includes clues
as to what category items have salience (such as recognition) in particular circum-
stances as discussed in Sect. 2.3. The second source of the knowledge effect is from
category-specific knowledge. Greater knowledge of category items enables participant
to compare a greater number of possible alternatives and to identify the recognition
of each through comparison. Our experiment was not designed to directly test these
two mechanisms, which remain for future research.

6 Conclusion

Coordination problems are important economic phenomena. In many practical man-

ifestations they are becoming harder to solve as people increasingly interact, in a
decentralised way, across social and cultural boundaries (Jackson and Xing 2014).
Commonalities between them that could be used as focal points are more limited. At
the same time there are more decision alternatives and greater information availabil-
ity with greater scope for knowledge curses. Our paper sheds light on the prospects
for coordination from these two developments. In contrast to the knowledge curse
hypothesis our results provide grounds for some optimism. More knowledgable peo-
ple are better at coordinating because their superior information enables them to better
identify focal points.
The fact that knowledge matters also suggests that open-form problems are differ-
ent in kind to closed-form problems commonly studied. They may require different
decision criteria to achieve coordination that merit further research.

123
144 S. Chuah et al.

Appendix: Experimental instructions

Coordination question
Name one [category]. Your objective is to give the same answer as your co-
participant. If this is the category randomly chosen for payment, you will earn
£10 if your answer is the same as your co-participant’s. You are free to choose
any valid item of the category as your answer for each question. However, if you
do not give an answer or if you give more than one answer or if your answer is
invalid or incorrect or unclear, you will not earn any money for the question.
Information Question

You will now be asked to provide all the possible correct answers to the 5 cat-
egories. One of the categories will be chosen at random for payment. For that
chosen category, you will earn £0.50 for each correct answer you provide. To be
correct, your answer must be valid (a valid member of that category) and clear
(not ambiguous). For each wrong answer you provide, you will lose
£0.50. The lowest you can earn for each category is £0 (i.e., you will not face
negative earnings). To maximise your earnings, you should provide as many
correct answers as you can. For example, say the chosen category was London
Airports, and you provide the following answers: Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick,
Luton and East Midlands. You will receive £2 for 4 correct answers (£0.50 ×
4). East Midlands is a wrong answer and you will lose £0.50 for this 1 wrong
answer. So your total earnings for this category will be £1.50.You may answer in
any order you wish, but you must finish within 15 min, after which this document
will be collected from you.
Strategy change question
Now that you have seen the complete list of correct answers for each of the 5
categories, we want to give you this opportunity to change your answers. For each
question below, please now indicate if you would like to change your an- swer. If
so, please write down your new answer. Your new answer will be used instead of
your original answer to be matched against your co-participant’s original answer.
Academic performance question

In which degree class is your current average across all modules taken so far at
University (first class, second class (upper), second class (lower), third class or
pass)?
General knowledge question

Say you were to participate in a general knowledge quiz competition. When

compared to the other participants in this experiment, how well do you think
you would perform in such a quiz, on a scale of 1–10 (with 10 being well-above
average performance)?

123
Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination… 145

References
Abele, S., & Stasser, G. (2008). Coordination success and interpersonal perceptions: Matching versus
mismatching. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(3), 576–592.
Abele, S., Stasser, G., & Chartier, C. (2014). Use of social knowledge in tacit coordination: Social focal
points. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 123(1), 23–33.
Abramson, B. (2005). Digital phoenix. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D. (2003). “Coherent arbitrariness”: Stable demand curves without
stable preferences. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(1), 73–105.
Arthur, W. B. (1989). Competing technologies, increasing returns, and lock-in by historical events. The
Economic Journal, 99(394), 116–131.
Biais, B., & Weber, M. (2009). Hindsight bias, risk perception, and investment performance. Management
Science, 55(6), 1018–1029.
Birch, S. A. (2005). When knowledge is a curse: Children’s and adults’ reasoning about mental states.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(1), 25–29.
Birch, S. A., & Bloom, P. (2007). The curse of knowledge in reasoning about false beliefs. Psy- chological
Science, 18(5), 382–386.
Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G., & Weber, M. (1989). The curse of knowledge in economic settings: An
experimental analysis. The Journal of Political Economy, 97(5), 1232–1254.
Cartwright, E. (2014). Behavioral economics (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.
Chuah, S. H., Hoffmann, R., Liu, B., & Tan, M. (2018). Is knowledge cursed when forecasting the forecasts
of others? Journal of Behavioral Finance. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427560.2018.1464454.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Earlbaum Associates.
Cooper, R., DeJong, D., Forsythe, R., & Ross, T. (1994). Alternative institutions for resolving co- ordination
problems: Experimental evidence on forward induction and preplay communication. In J. W. Friedman
(Ed.), Problems of coordination in economic activity. Boston: Kluwer.
Cooper R, John A (1988) Coordinating coordination failures in Keynesian models. The Quarterly Journal
of Economics 441–463
Curry, O., & Jones Chesters, M. (2012). Putting ourselves in the other fellow’s shoes: The role of theory of
mind in solving coordination problems. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 12(1), 147–159.
Dawes, R. M. (1989). Statistical criteria for establishing a truly false consensus effect. Journal of Experi-
mental Social Psychology, 25(1), 1–17.
Dufwenberg, M., & Gneezy, U. (2005). Gender coordination (pp. 253–262). Boston: Springer.
Fischhoff, B., & Beyth, R. (1975). I knew it would happen: Remembered probabilities of once—future
things. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 13(1), 1–16.
Fussell S (1992) Coordination of knowledge in communication: effects of speakers’ assumptions about
what others know. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1–14
Fussell, S., & Krauss, R. M. (1991). Accuracy and bias in estimates of others’ knowledge. Euro- pean
Journal of Social Psychology, 21(5), 445–454.
Goldstein, D., & Gigerenzer, G. (1999). The recognition heuristic: How ignorance makes us smart. In G.
Gigerenzer & P. Todd (Eds.), Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 37–58). Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Goldstein, D., & Gigerenzer, G. (2002). Models of ecological rationality: The recognition heuristic. Psy-
chological Review, 109(1), 75–90.
Hargreaves Heap, S. P., Rojo Arjona, D., & Sugden, R. (2017). Coordination when there are restricted and
unrestricted options. Theory and Decision, 83, 107–129.
Harsanyi, J., & Selten, R. (1988). A general theory of equilibrium selection in games. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
Hinds, P. J. (1999). The curse of expertise: The effects of expertise and debiasing methods on prediction of
novice performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 5(2), 205–221.
Ijiri, Y., & Simon, H. A. (1977). Skew distributions and the sizes of business firms. Amsterdam, Holland:
Noth Holland.
Jackson, M. O., & Xing, Y. (2014). Culture-dependent strategies in coordination games. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 111(3), 10889–10896.
Janssen, M. (1998). Focal points. In P. Newman (Ed.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the
Law (pp. 150–155). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

123
146 S. Chuah et al.

Kandori, M., Mailath, G. J., & Rob, R. (1993). Learning, mutation, and long-run equilibria in games.
Econometrica, 61(1), 29–56.
Krauss, R. M., & Fussell, S. (1991). Perspective-taking in communication: Representations of others’
knowledge in reference. Social Cognition, 9(1), 2–24.
Larkin, J., McDermott, J., Simon, D. P., & Simon, H. A. (1980). Expert and novice performance in solving
physics problems. Science, 208(4450), 1335–1342. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.208.4450.1335.
Mehta, J., Starmer, C., & Sugden, R. (1994). Focal points in pure coordination games: an experimental
investigation. Theory and Decision, 36, 163–185.
Nickerson, R. S. (1999). How we know—and sometimes misjudge—what others know: Imputing one’s
own knowledge to others. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 737–759.
Nickerson, R. S., Baddeley, A., & Freeman, B. (1987). Are people’s estimates of what other people know
influenced by what they themselves know? Acta Psychologica, 64(3), 245–259.
Pachur, T., Todd, P. M., Gigerenzer, G., Schooler, L. J., & Goldstein, D. G. (2016). When is the recognition
heuristic an adaptive tool? In P. M. Todd, G. Gigerenzer, & the ABC Research Group (Eds.), Ecological
rationality (pp. 113–143). Oxford: Oxford Press.
Rubinstein, A. (2000). Economics and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schelling, T. (1960). The strategy of conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Selten, R. (1998). Axiomatic characterization of the quadratic scoring rule. Experimental Economics, 1(1),
43–61.
Shapiro, C., & Varian, H. R. (1999). The art of standards wars. California Management Review, 41(1), 8–32.
Shipley, W. C. (1940). A self-administering scale for measuring intellectual impairment and deterioration.
Journal of Psychology, 9, 371–377.
Sugden, R. (1989). Spontaneous order. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3(4), 85–97.
Sugden, R. (1995). A theory of focal points. Economic Journal, 105(430), 533–550.
Thomas, K. A., DeScioli, P., Haque, O. S., & Pinker, S. (2014). The psychology of coordination and common
knowledge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(4), 657–676.
Van Huyck, J., Battalio, R., & Beil, R. (1990). Tacit coordination games, strategic uncertainty, and coordi-
nation failure. American Economic Review, 80, 234–248.
Zipf, K. G. (Ed.). (1949). Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least-Effort. Cambridge, MA: Addison-
Wesley.

Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations

123