Coalition formation in the triad when two are weak and one is strong

Eighteen groups of subjects each participated in five different computer-controlled superadditive 3-person characteristic function games with sidepayments, that modeled negotiable conflicts in which two of the players are weak and one is considerably stronger. Both the degree to which the strong player was powerful and the type of communication were experimentally manipulated. The 90 game outcomes rejected any solution concept that predicts a single payoff vector for a given coalition structure, but supported the recently developed single-parameter α-power model that allows range predictions. Both the degree of power and type of communication were found to affect game outcomes and to determine the predictive power of models that make point predictions in 3-person games.