Lay intuition suggests that some people are better than others at strategic social interaction. Nonetheless, identifying reliable predictors of individual differences in negotiation performance has been difficult. In this investigation, we hypothesized that an individuals' skill in understanding the structure of socially interdependent situations, and in best responding to others' likely behavior in such situations, should predict their negotiation performance. We adapted existing and novel social guessing games to measure such skills. In a series of studies with students and business executives in Russia and Sweden, performance in the guessing games predicted better individual outcomes and better joint outcomes in dyadic negotiations. Guessing-game performance remained predictive of both outcomes after proxies for general mental ability were controlled for. Potential applications to larger-scale phenomena are discussed.

中文翻译：

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在游戏中领先一步：用猜谜游戏的措施预测谈判结果

外行直觉表明，有些人在战略社交互动方面比其他人更好。尽管如此，确定谈判表现中个体差异的可靠预测因素一直很困难。在这项调查中，我们假设一个人在理解社会相互依存情况的结构方面的技能，以及在这种情况下对他人可能的行为做出最好的反应，应该预测他们的谈判表现。我们改编了现有的和新颖的社交猜谜游戏来衡量这些技能。在对俄罗斯和瑞典的学生和企业高管进行的一系列研究中，猜谜游戏的表现预测了二元谈判中更好的个人结果和更好的联合结果。在控制了一般心理能力的代理后，猜谜游戏的表现仍然可以预测这两种结果。讨论了对更大规模现象的潜在应用。