Convergence of aspirations and (partial) cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma (original) (raw)

Abstract.

This paper proposes an aspiration-based dynamic model for cooperation where a large population of agents are matched afresh every period to play a Prisoner's Dilemma. At each point in time, agents hold a common aspiration level which is updated on the basis of some “population statistic”, i.e. a certain scalar summary (e.g. average payoff) associated to the current state. On the other hand, those agents who feel “dissatisfied” (relative to current aspiration) switch actions at a rate which is increasing in the magnitude of the dissatisfaction. The resulting process is shown to converge in the long run under quite general conditions. Moreover, if agents are responsive enough, the long-run social state displays some extent of cooperation, with a constant positive fraction of the population (always less than half) choosing to cooperate in every period.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CentER, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands (e-mail: fpalomino@kub.nl), , , , , , NL
    Frédéric Palomino
  2. Facultad de Economicas and Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Economicas, Universidad de Alicante, E-03071 Alicante, Spain (e-mail: fvega@merlin.fae.ua.es), , , , , , ES
    Fernando Vega-Redondo

Authors

  1. Frédéric Palomino
  2. Fernando Vega-Redondo

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Received: January 1998/Revised version: October 1998

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Palomino, F., Vega-Redondo, F. Convergence of aspirations and (partial) cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma.Game Theory 28, 465–488 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/s001820050120

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