De Dreu and Gross argue that only asymmetric games allow the motives underlying defense and attack to be disentangled. However, the Prisoner's Dilemma Game Alt matrix, a modified symmetric PDG, also allows these motives to be disentangled. Studies using the PDG-Alt matrix produced findings contradicting a central claim of De Dreu and Gross.

Notwithstanding the appeal of the “one size fits all” approach that Baumeister et al. propose, we argue that there is no panacea for improving group performance. The concept of “differentiation of selves” constitutes an umbrella term for similar seeming but actually different constructs. Even the same type of “differentiation of selves” can be beneficial for some and harmful for other tasks.