Fig. 2: Charting the nuances of token distribution: a descriptive exploration.

a We dive into the realm of individual strategies, visualized through a histogram of sent tokens. The majority of students appear to play the extremes, either fully leveraging their endowment of ten tokens or sending just a fraction of it, reflecting intriguing behavioral tendencies. b Further dissection of the token distribution is carried out through a histogram highlighting the minimum and maximum contributions by each student. The distribution unveils a propensity among the majority of students to explore the entire spectrum of possible token contributions, indicating that the choice of sending strategies is entwined with the relational dynamics with their peers. c The macro-level manifestation of individual strategies is assembled into a comprehensive dyadic-level histogram, providing a bird’s eye view of the experiment. Three key interaction patterns emerge—scenarios where both players send a few tokens (bottom-left), instances where both players fully utilize their endowment (top right), and situations characterized by an imbalance with one player sending most of the tokens while the other sends few (bottom right).