I used the Fearon bargaining activity outlined in my last post for the first time very recently. Here are my anecdotal observations on its effectiveness.
First, only one of the four dyads in class fought a war in the initial complete information round. The other dyads immediately understood why war shouldn’t occur and after some discussion, the warring group got it. I would have been happy with the success of the game just after that round; in my experience, getting students to accept Fearon’s main premise that a bargaining range always exists is challenging.
Second, students quickly realized that giving me two of their candies (as the cost of war) was undesirable and they’d prefer to reach a deal than lose candy. I used this to demonstrate that war is rare—most of the time, the sides will reach a deal to avoid paying the high costs of war. Students have also struggled with this idea in the past and having physical objects taken away as a cost of war really conveyed the message.
During debriefing, I found it useful to walk through at least one “war” and demonstrate how a bargaining range existed. A lopsided victory is helpful in showing how both sides still would have preferred a deal to avoid war. Finally, I allowed the students to “negotiate” before the defender had to accept or reject the deal. This opened up discussion of signaling and the absence of costly signals in the activity.
Although I did not do a formal assessment, student performance on the related questions on the subsequent midterm exam was quite good. The applications in the essay by and large demonstrated a deep understanding of the existence of a bargaining range, issue indivisibility, and how costly signals affect the probability of war. I’m considering a formal assessment of the activity in the future, but my gut is that it gave the students a better understanding of an abstract theory by helping them internalize its main ideas.