Experimental conditions

The owner behaved according to three different conditions, which were consistent across two sessions (totalizing 60 trials per condition): “payoff dominant” condition (always chose stag), “risk averse” condition (always chose hare), or a “random” condition where the human chose randomly and there was no stable “solution” for the animals (that is, the subjects needed to adjust their choice in each trial, depending on what the partner did). For the random condition, the experimenter randomized the choices and informed the owner about where to go by pointing of the respective choice on a piece of paper. Subjects were confronted with each condition in a semi-randomized order, counterbalanced across subjects. The two sessions of the same condition always happened sequentially (see Fig. 3).

Illustration of the experimental design. Note that the order in which conditions were presented was counterbalanced across subjects, and the orders presented are an example.