Figure 1: Change in behaviour and information requests in the course of time.

(a) Change in the relative frequency of cases that option A was chosen for each context (sixteen replicate groups in grey, averages in colour). Over time, replicate groups approach a Nash equilibrium of the games (broken lines, arrows; option B yielded a higher payoff than A in both the best choice and the social dilemma context). (b) Counts of combinations of information types requested in corresponding rounds. Before making their decision, subjects could collect six pieces of costly information about their peer group members. For each peer, available information was his decision in the previous round, his payoff in the previous round and his total payoff obtained in the present context. Requests for payoffs (and associated decisions; light blue bars) prevail in the best choice context and occur regularly in the social contexts; requests only involving recent decisions (red bars) prevail in the social contexts and occur regularly in the best choice context. With the exception of the final round (where subjects often request information on total payoffs) other types of requests are very rare.