In everyday life, people often face choices between pursuing their own interests and cooperating with others. Cooperation helps individuals achieve shared goals and build positive relationships, but it often requires sacrificing some immediate personal benefit. Adolescence is a critical period during which young people learn how to manage friendships and collaborate in groups. Many studies have shown that teenagers tend to cooperate less than adults, but the reasons for this remain unclear. Do adolescents struggle to recognise when others are willing to cooperate, or do they recognise these intentions but choose to prioritise their own benefit?

Wu et al. aimed to understand why adolescents cooperate less than adults, both in their behaviour and in the decision-making processes that underlie it. Specifically, they examined whether adolescents fail to recognise cooperative behaviour from others, or whether they do recognise it but are more tempted than adults to take advantage of the situation for personal gain.

To investigate this, the researchers compared the behaviour of teenagers and adults in a repeated cooperation game. In this game, two players could either cooperate for mutual benefit or attempt to gain more for themselves at their partner’s expense. The results showed that teenagers cooperated less than adults, particularly after their partner had just cooperated. Importantly, teenagers and adults were equally accurate in estimating how cooperative their partner was. This suggests that adolescents recognise when others are willing to cooperate but feel less motivated to reciprocate.

These findings may help teachers, parents, and those designing school programmes better support teenagers’ social development. The study of Wu et al. suggests that it may be useful not only to help adolescents understand others’ intentions, but also to strengthen the value they place on fairness and on reciprocating cooperation when others behave kindly. Future research should explore whether similar patterns occur in real-life interactions and across more diverse groups of young people.