Dataset Description

Phase 0 — Registration

The study was preregistered on OSF and approved by the Ethics Council of the Max Planck Society under the Haptic Intelligence Department’s framework agreement as protocol F034C. Before attending the laboratory session, potential participants completed a comprehensive digital registration form covering eligibility screening, demographics, and psychometric data.

Recruitment

Participants were recruited between July and September 2025 through institutional mailing lists and a multi-site physical poster campaign. To ensure a broad and diverse reach, posters were displayed at and around research and university facilities at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS), the University of Stuttgart, and Hochschule der Medien. Diverse public venues, such as local social hubs and municipal libraries, were included in the campaign, along with targeted digital advertising across social media platforms and community-based instant messaging groups.

Eligibility Criteria

To ensure data quality and participant safety, candidates were required to:

Be at least 18 years old.
Speak and understand English well (at least B2 level).
Have no current visual or auditory disabilities (to be able to see and hear the experimenters, other participants, and the puzzles).
Have no current cognitive deficits that would prevent helping the team solve the puzzles.
Have no current cardiac conditions that could impair participation or cardiac data analysis.
Have the physical ability to stand, walk, kneel, and use both hands.
Not currently be pregnant or breastfeeding.
Have no prior interactions with any other team member.
Be completely unfamiliar with the escape game used in this study.

Registration Form

The registration form captured demographic and psychometric data across several dimensions:

Category	Item / Instrument	What it captures
Demographics	Age	Age in years.
	Gender identity	Self-reported gender identity.
	Ethnicity	Self-reported ethnic background.
	Education level	Highest completed academic degree.
	Occupation	Current professional or academic activity.
Subjective Social Status	MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status	Perceived standing relative to others in society.
Curiosity & Exploration	Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II (CEI-II)	Dispositional curiosity and openness to new experiences.

You can download the Lime Survey structure file (registration.lss).

Team Formation

We received 422 unique, valid registrations. From this qualified pool we 46 teams using a controlled sampling design to minimize pre-existing familiarity and facilitate research on leadership emergence and diversity. We assigned previously unacquainted members to teams with a strict gender balance. Due to last-minute cancellations, two teams consisted of three members, resulting in a total final cohort of 182 participants. Individuals with no formal affiliation with the Max Planck Society received a flat monetary compensation of 50€ EUR for their four-hour sessions, and all participants received small non-monetary gifts. We fully decoupled compensation from task performance to ensure that the recorded interactions remained natural and ecologically valid rather than hyper-competitive.

← Experimental Setup Phase 1 — Pre-Task Baseline →