Meeting point.
Without talking and without seeing each other, can you land on the same answer as everyone else in the room?
Original study
- Schelling, T. C. (1960). The strategy of conflict. Harvard University Press. Source
- Mehta, J., Starmer, C., & Sugden, R. (1994). The nature of salience: An experimental investigation of pure coordination games. American Economic Review, 84(3), 658–673. Source
- Bardsley, N., Mehta, J., Starmer, C., & Sugden, R. (2010). Explaining focal points: Cognitive hierarchy theory versus team reasoning. The Economic Journal, 120(543), 40–79. Source
- Crawford, V. P., Gneezy, U., & Rottenstreich, Y. (2008). The power of focal points is limited: Even minute payoff asymmetry may yield large coordination failures. American Economic Review, 98(4), 1443–1458. Source
- Arechar, A. A., Gächter, S., & Molleman, L. (2018). Conducting interactive experiments online. Experimental Economics, 21(1), 99–131. Source
Our adaptation
A live-room adaptation of Schelling's (1960) focal points and the pure coordination experiment of Mehta, Starmer and Sugden (1994). When 10 people gather in a public room (3–200 in private rooms), the same three questions (a number, a meeting place in Istanbul, a time) are asked first in PICK mode (your own preference) and then in MATCH mode (try to give the same answer as others); each question has seven fixed options and 15 seconds. Option order is shuffled per player.
Differences from the original study
- In the original, answers were free and matching paid real money; here there are seven fixed options and imaginary points.
- The same people play PICK and then MATCH; in the original the two modes were given to different groups.
- The question content was adapted to Turkey.
Measured variables
The columns of the open data file. List fields are expanded into numbered columns (for example rt_60, est_3); JSON columns contain only numbers and fixed stimulus names.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
group_id | group code | Room code: links rows from the same room; regenerated at random in every release. |
group_size | integer | Number of players in the room. |
points | number | Player's total points: in each MATCH question the percentage of the other players giving the same answer (rounded) is added. |
picks | JSON | Choice in each of the six questions (option index in the order of the question parameters; null = no answer): the first three PICK, the last three MATCH. |
pick_match | number | Mean share (%) of the other players who gave the same answer as the player in PICK questions. |
coord_match | number | Mean share (%) of the other players who gave the same answer as the player in MATCH questions. |
Columns present in every file (14)
row_id | string | Row code. Regenerated at random in every release; it does not identify a person and cannot be matched across releases or experiments. |
experiment | string | Short name of the experiment (URL slug). |
experiment_version | integer | Version of the answer format. For experiments whose format changed, only the current format is published. |
date | YYYY-MM-DD | YYYY-Www | YYYY-MM | Day the answer was given (Istanbul time). If fewer than 5 answers share the same day, language and device, it is coarsened to the ISO week, and to the month if that is still too few. |
date_precision | day | week | month | Precision of the date column. |
lang | tr | en | (boş) | Interface language. Language recording started in the first week of October 2026; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise. |
device | desktop | mobile | tablet | (boş) | Device class reported by the browser (class only; browser details are neither stored here nor published). |
source | site | embed | Where the answer came from: the balabs site or the experiment embedded on another site. The embedding site is not published. |
mode | free | daily | challenge | race | session | (boş) | Play mode in scored experiments: free play, daily round, challenge, race room, experiment session. Empty for unscored experiments and for older answers that did not store it. |
color_vision | normal | rg | by | contrast | (boş) | In color-based experiments, the color vision mode the participant chose: normal, red-green, blue-yellow or high contrast. Stimuli are generated along different axes per mode, so compare within a mode. Empty for other experiments. |
first_play | 1 | Every row is a participant’s first play of this experiment (always 1). Replays are stored only as leaderboard scores and are not part of the open data. |
seen_before | yes | no | unsure | (boş) | Participant’s own report of whether they had seen this experiment or its known answer before (in experiments that ask). |
duration_s | number | Time from the start of the experiment to submitting the answer, in seconds (measured in the browser, 0.1 s). |
play_score | number | Leaderboard score of the first play (scored experiments; defined on the method card). Empty for unscored experiments. |
Exclusion criteria
Answers to this experiment are never accepted from the browser; they are written on the server from the room's action records only when the room ends.
- Only each participant's first answer to this experiment; replays are not included.
- Simulated rows, bots, banned and sample accounts are not included.
- Answers before 3 October 2026 are not included (the first day the open data notice was live).
Scoring
This experiment has no leaderboard score. The crowd result is the share of the most popular answer and the coordination rate in both modes.
Version notes
- October 2026
The interface language (lang) started being stored with each answer; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise.