The interplay between I and We intentionality

Abstract

We and I intentionality appear to be two distinct forms of human intentionality, as one cannot be explained in terms of the other. We-intentionality is part of the psychological infrastructure at the basis of human cooperative behavior, while I-intentionality is potentially more related to competitive relationships with conspecifics. Our work tries to empirically address the relationship between these two forms of human intentionality as exhibited during the early stages of human development. The experimental setting consisted of four different games, two competitive and two cooperative. We focused our experiment on three age groups and schooling: Early Elementary School Children (mean = 5 years 6 months; σ = 4.2 months), Late Elementary School Children (mean = 9 years 4 months; σ = 7.5 months), and Adult University students (mean = 21 years; σ = 11 months). The key aspect of the investigation was that only one participant was informed of the game, rules, and reward. The second participant came to the set uninformed. It was the first participant's decision whether and how to engage the latter in the game. We were especially interested in the communicative behaviors: when and how the informed participant would share his or her information. We observed that the Adult University Informed participants shared their information with the Adult University Uninformed participants, while this almost never happened in Early Elementary School Children. Late Elementary School Children presented a split halfway between keeping and sharing the information. The results seem to support the hypothesis of a developmental relationship between the two forms of intentions. They also suggest that the two forms of intentionality are complementary. Each plays a specific role in human relationships with social and physical environments: the We-intentionality would establish the common ground within which the I-intentionality would manifest itself.