The Effects of Debriefing on the Performance and Attitude of Japanese University Students

The present study examined the effects of debriefing on 171 Japanese university students as part of an international collaboration between Austria and Japan. There were eight experimental conditions, as follows: control group without treatment, fun game with no debriefing, Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game with no debriefing, PD game with self-completed debriefing, PD game with guided written debriefing, PD game with guided written debriefing and a conceptual frame, no game but reading of a text, and no game but study of a picture. Following completion of these activities, groups of four participants then played the Highway Planning Game [1], which deals with cooperation and conflict. Although performance during the Highway Planning Game did not significantly differ among the groups (probably because of the small number of groups), there were interesting differences in terms of performance and attitudes that will stimulate further research.