What Happens When Preschoolers Play Cooperative vs. Competitive Board Games?

This doesn't mean games don't matter—it simply means their influence is more nuanced. The real magic might be in the shared experience itself.

The Hidden Superpower: Practicing Life Skills

Whether a child is working with teammates to beat a clock or racing to the finish line against friends, every board game is a structured social microcosm. Both formats demand the same fundamental skills:

• Waiting Your Turn: A cornerstone of impulse control.
• Following a Set of Rules: The bedrock of social and moral development.
• Responding to Peers’ Actions: Constant, real-time social calibration.

These elements provide children with a low-stakes environment to practice behavioral control and social interaction. It’s not the winning or losing that's the primary teacher, but the process of playing fairly with others. This interpretation aligns with broader findings that even competitive games can boost prosocial behaviors like sharing and helping in a play context. On the flip side, other research suggests that a purely competitive context can sometimes reduce sharing immediately afterward, highlighting how sensitive behavior is to the environment.

Correcting the Record: The Full Citation

The source you're looking for is definitively Eriksson, Kenward, Poom, & Stenberg (2021). A small but important correction: the author you noted as "tenberg" is Gunilla Stenberg.

Here is the complete citation in APA 7th Edition format for your reference list:

Eriksson, M., Kenward, B., Poom, L., & Stenberg, G. (2021). The behavioral effects of cooperative and competitive board games in preschoolers. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 62(3), 355–364. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12708

For In-Text Citations:

• Parenthetical: (Eriksson, Kenward, Poom, & Stenberg, 2021)
• Narrative: Eriksson, Kenward, Poom, and Stenberg (2021) found that...
• Subsequent citations: (Eriksson et al., 2021)

Limitations and a Grain of Salt

It's crucial to note the study's own boundaries. The finding that the immediate type of game didn't drastically change behavior doesn't override the entire body of research. Other studies have shown that a competitive setting can increase aggression or decrease sharing in some children. The key takeaway is context-dependent. A six-week study with a specific set of board games and 65 Swedish preschoolers gives us a vital piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture.

The Bottom Line

So, should you ban competitive games or force your preschooler into a cooperative utopia? The evidence from Eriksson et al. (2021) says probably not. The deeper value lies in the act of playing together. Whether working in unison or in friendly rivalry, children are learning the fundamental dance of social life—how to wait, how to follow a shared reality of rules, and how to handle themselves when interacting with others. The board game, in any flavor, might just be one of the oldest and most effective social toolkits we have.