cooperation.law

Acting together binds us.

The click and its conditions

Successful cooperation often shows itself in a moment when the interplay suddenly runs by itself. This click cannot be produced, but its conditions can be cultivated.

The phenomenon

Two people are carrying a wardrobe down a staircase. For a while they call out “left”, “wait”, “put it down”. Then, two landings further on, it goes by itself: each feels in the weight what the other is about to do. Musicians know the same moment in rehearsal, players in a game, a working group in the meeting where one thought gives rise to the next.

This does not happen gradually but all at once. That is why this page speaks of the click. Those who have experienced it describe it in similar terms: effort recedes, attention widens, and one’s own contribution feels both greater and less one’s own.

Psychology has words for this. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described complete absorption in an activity as flow. Keith Sawyer, who studied jazz ensembles and improvisational theatre, speaks of group flow. These terms name the phenomenon; they do not yet explain where it comes from. Research on flow in groups is young, and so are its measuring instruments.

The shared third

What stands out is where the participants look at the moment of the click: not at each other, but at a third thing. The two on the staircase attend to the wardrobe, the musicians to the piece, the working group to the task. What they share lies not between them but in front of them.

Developmental psychology shows how early this begins. Around their first birthday, roughly between nine and fifteen months, children for the first time link another person and an object in shared attention: they check whether their mother sees the ball too. Michael Tomasello and his research group in Leipzig see in this shared attention the starting point of human cooperation and culture.

The shared third takes pressure off. Whoever attends to the task need not keep checking how they come across. It is precisely this that creates a closeness which cannot be forced by seeking it directly.

Joy without a purpose

The click brings a particular kind of joy. It does not depend on the result. A band may remember a rehearsal in which it clicked as the best of the year, even though not a single piece was finished. The joy is in the interplay itself. Experiments show that flow with others is more enjoyable than flow alone, and the more so the more people depend on one another.

Anyone who has shared this joy with others often sees them differently afterwards. They have seen that the others come along when it matters. This is the link to play, where joy without a purpose takes its purest form.

Can the click be encouraged?

The click cannot be ordered. Declaring it the goal of a meeting usually prevents it. It resembles falling asleep: you cannot will it, you can only create the circumstances in which it happens.

That does not make it arbitrary. The click comes less often when roles are unclear, when one person dominates or when nobody knows the matter at hand. It comes more often when certain conditions are met. These conditions can be described, practised and taken into account when a cooperation is designed.

The conditions

The following fourteen conditions were gathered from experience, in a reading group, in teaching and in play, and then checked against research. There is still little research on the click itself. Most points rest on findings from neighbouring fields: flow, team research, research on cooperation and developmental psychology. Where a finding is disputed, this is noted. Keith Sawyer arrived at a similar list in his study of improvisation ensembles.

The matter at hand

  1. A shared third. People do not look at each other but together at something: a game, a text, a speech, a work. Those who know that others are attending to the same thing at the same time perceive it more intensely and remember it better (Shteynberg 2015).
  2. A clear goal, the right difficulty. Everyone knows what it is about and soon sees whether it is working. The task stretches everyone but overwhelms no one. Both are among the best-supported conditions of flow (Fong, Zaleski & Leach 2015). Feedback helps when it is about the task. When it turns attention to the person, it often does more harm than good (Kluger & DeNisi 1996).
  3. Real interdependence. It cannot be done alone, and every contribution is visible. Half-hearted interdependence, in which everyone is also playing for themselves, works worse than either a clear division of labour or genuine interplay (Wageman 1995).

The interplay

  1. Real time and rhythm. Everyone acts at the same time and responds to the others, like musicians listening to one another. That shared rhythm connects people has often been observed (Mogan, Fischer & Bulbulia 2017). How strong the effect is, is currently under critical debate (Atwood, Schachner & Mehr 2022).
  2. Listening and building on. People take up what the other has said rather than waiting for the chance to voice their own thought. In improvisational theatre this is called “yes, and …”. Sawyer counts close listening and building on what has been heard among the core conditions of group flow (Sawyer 2007).
  3. The voice. Speech connects more strongly than writing: you hear that someone is thinking and feeling. Adding a picture often brings less than people expect (Kumar & Epley 2021; Schroeder, Kardas & Epley 2017).
  4. A shared language. Short callouts, roles and terms that everyone understands save words and create belonging. Teams that share an understanding of their task demonstrably work better together (DeChurch & Mesmer-Magnus 2010). The language must not become a code that shuts newcomers out.
  5. Recognition in the moment. A “nice shot” at the right moment, audible to all and about what has succeeded. In gaming teams that hold together, a mistake is more often followed by encouragement than by reproach (Tan et al. 2022). Even a brief thank-you makes people markedly more willing to help again (Grant & Gino 2010).

The relationship

  1. Trust in advance. People come in through friends or a community and do not have to start from zero. This advance holds if it is soon honoured by reliable action. Otherwise it quickly falls apart (Meyerson, Weick & Kramer 1996; Jarvenpaa & Leidner 1999).
  2. A rare shared interest. Anyone who voluntarily reads Hegel or practises public speaking shares something unusual with the others. Rare things in common connect more strongly than common ones (Alves 2018).
  3. Vulnerability, cheap failure. People show what is unfinished, a tentative reading or an uncertain speech, and are not exposed for it. A failed attempt costs little, and the next round starts afresh. Teams in which this is safe learn more (Edmondson 1999). What feels like weakness from the inside is often seen by others as courage (Bruk, Scholl & Bless 2018).
  4. Joy without a purpose. There is carefree time without goal or use, in which people laugh together. Shared laughter releases the body’s own opioids and makes it easier to open up (Manninen et al. 2017; Gray, Parkinson & Dunbar 2015). But fun by order is no fun. Where fun is prescribed from above, cynicism tends to follow (Fleming 2005).

The frame

  1. An open space and a next time. People are together casually, can leave and come back, and take part in each other’s everyday lives. Online, such a space replaces the corridor, the kitchen, the open door. Mizuko Ito spoke of “ambient virtual co-presence” in close relationships (Ito & Okabe 2005). Those who know they will meet again are more likely to cooperate today. Robert Axelrod calls this the shadow of the future (Axelrod 1984; Dal Bó 2005).
  2. Fair rules. The frame applies equally to all, is transparent and is shaped as far as possible by those it applies to. For disputes there is a fair procedure. This is law in the wide sense. People support rules above all when they consider fair the procedure by which the rules are made and applied (Tyler 1990). Communities that shape their own rules and can settle disputes simply often last for generations (Ostrom 1990).

The list will continue to be developed.

An example

A reading group has been meeting live online once a week for months to read a difficult philosophical text. Most evenings are work: sentence by sentence, with questions and detours.

One evening something shifts. One participant proposes a reading, another takes it up and applies it to the next paragraph, a third finds the point where it no longer holds. For half an hour each person works on from the previous speaker’s sentence instead of commenting on it. Everyone is looking at the text, nobody at themselves.

Several conditions come together here: the shared third, the rare interest, a tentative reading that nobody smiles at, building on the other’s thought. That the participants are sitting in different places in front of their screens plays no part in that moment. The click needs no shared room.

What this means for the law

The law does not know the click, and it cannot create it. No contract obliges anyone to play well together. But the law can secure some of the conditions under which the click becomes possible: reliable commitments, clear roles and responsibilities, confidentiality, fair procedures for disputes.

Anyone designing a cooperation in legal terms should therefore ask not only what is owed. They should also ask whether the rules leave room for what cannot be owed. A contract that specifies every move invites the parties to owe nothing but the move. The thinking-along from which the click comes then becomes a private matter.

Further reading

Literature

  • Alves, H. (2018): Sharing Rare Attitudes Attracts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 44.
  • Atwood, S., Schachner, A. & Mehr, S. A. (2022): Expectancy Effects Threaten the Inferential Validity of Synchrony-Prosociality Research. Open Mind 6.
  • Axelrod, R. (1984): The Evolution of Cooperation. New York.
  • Bruk, A., Scholl, S. G. & Bless, H. (2018): Beautiful Mess Effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 115.
  • Carpenter, M., Nagell, K. & Tomasello, M. (1998): Social Cognition, Joint Attention, and Communicative Competence from 9 to 15 Months of Age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 63.
  • Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990): Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York.
  • Dal Bó, P. (2005): Cooperation under the Shadow of the Future. American Economic Review 95.
  • DeChurch, L. A. & Mesmer-Magnus, J. R. (2010): The Cognitive Underpinnings of Effective Teamwork. Journal of Applied Psychology 95.
  • Edmondson, A. (1999): Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly 44.
  • Fleming, P. (2005): Workers’ Playtime? Boundaries and Cynicism in a “Culture of Fun” Program. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 41.
  • Fong, C. J., Zaleski, D. J. & Leach, J. K. (2015): The Challenge–Skill Balance and Antecedents of Flow. The Journal of Positive Psychology 10.
  • Grant, A. M. & Gino, F. (2010): A Little Thanks Goes a Long Way. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98.
  • Gray, A. W., Parkinson, B. & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2015): Laughter’s Influence on the Intimacy of Self-Disclosure. Human Nature 26.
  • Ito, M. & Okabe, D. (2005): Technosocial Situations. In: Ito, M., Okabe, D. & Matsuda, M. (eds.), Personal, Portable, Pedestrian. Cambridge, Mass.
  • Jarvenpaa, S. L. & Leidner, D. E. (1999): Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams. Organization Science 10.
  • Kluger, A. N. & DeNisi, A. (1996): The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Performance. Psychological Bulletin 119.
  • Kumar, A. & Epley, N. (2021): It’s Surprisingly Nice to Hear You. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 150.
  • Manninen, S. et al. (2017): Social Laughter Triggers Endogenous Opioid Release in Humans. Journal of Neuroscience 37.
  • Meyerson, D., Weick, K. E. & Kramer, R. M. (1996): Swift Trust and Temporary Groups. In: Kramer, R. M. & Tyler, T. R. (eds.), Trust in Organizations. Thousand Oaks.
  • Mogan, R., Fischer, R. & Bulbulia, J. A. (2017): To Be in Synchrony or Not? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 72.
  • Ostrom, E. (1990): Governing the Commons. Cambridge.
  • Sawyer, K. (2007): Group Genius. The Creative Power of Collaboration. New York.
  • Schroeder, J., Kardas, M. & Epley, N. (2017): The Humanizing Voice. Psychological Science 28.
  • Shteynberg, G. (2015): Shared Attention. Perspectives on Psychological Science 10.
  • Tan, E. T. S. et al. (2022): Communication Sequences Indicate Team Cohesion. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6 (CHI PLAY).
  • Tomasello, M. et al. (2005): Understanding and Sharing Intentions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28.
  • Tyler, T. R. (1990): Why People Obey the Law. New Haven.
  • Wageman, R. (1995): Interdependence and Group Effectiveness. Administrative Science Quarterly 40.
  • Walker, C. J. (2010): Experiencing Flow: Is Doing It Together Better than Doing It Alone? The Journal of Positive Psychology 5.