This study requires 7-10 participants. This study is also available through the Boom Town mobile app for Android and for Apple. There you'll get notifications whenever we play and can play right on your mobile device.
Once you start the game, you will take a 2-3 minute survey about yourself and then participate in a brief tutorial and practice round where you will dig, mine, and blow up rocks to collect gold. After the pracitce, you'll enter the waiting room where we will match you with other participants to play together. If you don't want to wait, invite your friends to play along with you. Once matched with a team, you'll play five rounds working together to collect the most gold against other teams. After all five rounds are done, the game ends. In all, it should take about 20 minutes. You can participate as many times as you like. Play early and often!
Everything. More specifically, everything that might influence group behavior. Researchers across the social and behavioral sciences have long studied what makes groups tick and have come up with hundreds of different variables. In this experiment, we're recruiting thousands of groups to participate in a complex study meant to test over 150 of the most important hypotheses all at once. We want to know which of these matters most. This means that everything you do in Boom Town matters and will help us understand what forces really matter for group behavior.
Humans are social creatures. The better we are at working together, the more creative, intelligent, and challenging the things we can accomplish are. Great teams build rocket ships, make laws, and win championships. We want to know what makes these great teams different.
Almost everyone works in teams, were educated in groups and classes in school, marry into a team we call family. Our research will help shed light on what makes all of these types of teams better. And, if we know what makes good teams tick, perhaps we can make the teams in our own lives better.
Contact Gallup's World Lab Support Team - WorldLab@Gallup.com. They will answer any questions about this study and upcoming experiments.
This study has been approved by Gallup's review board. For further details, please contact Camille Lloyd, Gallup Human Research Protections Program: Camille_Lloyd@gallup.com.