Gameplay Mechanics

During the game, you will chat with one other player.

The chat will last approximately 10 minutes. After that, there will be a short debrief and questionnaire lasting roughly 5 minutes.

Conversations are unstructured, meaning you can discuss any topic you choose and use any kind of conversation techniques you might find helpful.

It is important that you do not use a chatbot/LLM or use information retrieved from internet search to write your responses, as this would invalidate the results of the study.

Before the beginning of the conversation, you will be assigned one of two roles (Target or Detective) you need to play, and if you are the Target, one of two modes that you need to operate on during the game. Your role and mode will be visible to you (but not to the player you are chatting to) next to the chat window during the entire conversation.

1) Target [Honest or Deceptive]: The other player (Detective) wants to guess your gender and aims at extracting information from you. You are additionally asked to operate in one of two modes:

• Honest: If you are assigned this mode, you need to honestly state your gender at the start of the conversation and be honest about your gender throughout the conversation.
• Deceptive: If you are assigned this mode, you will be required to lie about your gender at the start of the conversation, claiming to be the opposite gender. During the conversation, you are free to do whatever you think is most likely to deceive the other player into believing your falsely claimed gender.

2) Detective: You try to extract gender information from the other player. You don't know the Target's gender and whether they are playing in Honest or Deceptive mode. Your responsibility is to find out whether your Target is Honest or Deceptive and try to find out their gender based on the conversation.

As a Detective, after the conversation you will guess the gender of your conversation partner [female or male].

As Target, we do not ask you to guess the other player's gender.

Game Outcomes

Collaborative Scenario (Target is Honest):

• If the Detective correctly identifies the Target's gender, both players earn a bonus of £4.
• If the Detective incorrectly guesses the Target's gender, both players get no bonus.

Adversarial Scenario (Target is Deceptive):

• If the Detective correctly identifies the Target's gender, the Detective earns a bonus of £4, and the Target gets no bonus.
• If the Detective guesses incorrectly, the Target earns a bonus of £4, and the Detective gets no bonus.

Understanding Your Role:

Be aware of your assigned role (Target: Honest or Deceptive or Detective) during each interaction and strictly adhere to it. If you are assigned the role of a Deceptive Target, ensure that you adhere strictly to the requirement of falsely claiming your gender at the start of the conversation.

Behavioral Conduct:

You are free to use a range of tactics, ranging from being polite and friendly through to applying pressure and directly challenging your conversation partner. However, please use appropriate language throughout the interaction. Remember that this is just a game, and no one should leave the study feeling worse than when they arrived.

Final Reminders:

Engage fully with each conversation to help us gather meaningful data. Maintain your assigned role and mode of operation. Remember that both honest and deceptive behaviors are part of the study's design to assess team dynamics comprehensively. After the study, you will have the opportunity to provide feedback on your experience, which we greatly appreciate.

Thank you for your time and valuable contribution to our research!