Abstract
Humans in most cultures around the world play rule-based games, yet research on the content and structure of these games is limited. Previous studies investigating rule-based games across cultures have either focused on a small handful of cultures, thus limiting the generalizability of findings, or used cross-cultural databases from which the raw data are not accessible, thus limiting the transparency, applicability, and replicability of research findings. Furthermore, games have long been defined as competitive interactions, thereby blinding researchers to the cross-cultural variation in the cooperativeness of rule-based games. The current dataset provides ethnographic, historic information on games played in cultural groups in the Austronesian language family. These game descriptions (Ngames = 907) are available and codeable for researchers interested in games. We also develop a unique typology of the cooperativeness of the goal structure of games and apply this typology to the dataset. Researchers are encouraged to use this dataset to examine cross-cultural variation in the cooperativeness of games and further our understanding of human cultural behaviour on a larger scale.
Highlights
Background and summaryFor humans and non-human animals, play is an essential activity that prepares individuals for adult life
Game types vary with geographic location (Mogel, 2008), child-rearing practices (Roberts and Sutton-Smith, 1962), and social complexity (Roberts et al, 1959)
A commonly used definition of games in the anthropological and psychological literature (Avedon and Sutton-Smith, 1971; Barry and Roberts, 1972; Chick, 1998, 2015; Peregrine, 2008; Roberts and Sutton-Smith, 1962, 1966; Silver, 1978) includes competition as a prerequisite: “a recreational activity characterized by organized play, competition, two or more sides, criteria for determining the winner, and agreedupon rules” (Roberts et al, 1959)
Summary
For humans and non-human animals, play is an essential activity that prepares individuals for adult life. A commonly used definition of games in the anthropological and psychological literature (Avedon and Sutton-Smith, 1971; Barry and Roberts, 1972; Chick, 1998, 2015; Peregrine, 2008; Roberts and Sutton-Smith, 1962, 1966; Silver, 1978) includes competition as a prerequisite: “a recreational activity characterized by organized play, competition, two or more sides, criteria for determining the winner, and agreedupon rules” (Roberts et al, 1959) This view has shaped our understanding of games as competitive interactions and has excluded other forms of games—such as cooperative or solitary ones—from the lenses of psychological and anthropological research. We encourage researchers to use the current dataset to test predictions about the distribution of the cooperativeness of games, or to code other aspects of games, such as the type of skill needed to play the game (Roberts et al, 1959), the psychological interdependence of players (Eifermann, 1970), the ages and sex of players, or the use of objects in games across cultures. Researchers could ask questions about the role games might play in children’s social learning across cultures (Boyette, 2016b), or whether the distribution of games relates to other cultural variables such as social stratification (Boyette, 2016a; Roberts et al, 1959) or levels of intergroup conflict (Richerson et al, 2016)
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