When is the Risk of Cooperation Worth Taking? The Prisoner’s Dilemma as a Game of Multiple Motives (original) (raw)
Related papers
Frontiers in Psychology, 2017
Cooperative behavior is often assumed to depend on individuals' characteristics, such as altruism and reasoning ability. Evidence is mixed about what the precise impact of these characteristics is, as the subjects of study are generally randomly paired, generating a heterogeneous mix of the two characteristics. In this study we ex-ante create four different groups of subjects by factoring their higher or lower than the median scores in both altruism and reasoning ability. Then we use these groups in order to analyze the joint effect of the two characteristics on the individual choice of cooperating and on successful paired cooperation. Subjects belonging to each group play first 10 one-shot prisoner's dilemma (PD) games with ten random partners and then three consecutive 10-round repeated PD games with three random partners. In all games, we elicit players' beliefs regarding cooperation using an incentive compatible method. Individuals with high altruism are more optimistic about the cooperative behavior of the other player in the one-shot game. They also show higher individual cooperation and paired cooperation rates in the first repetitions of this game. Contrary to the one-shot PD games where high reasoning ability reduces the probability of playing cooperatively, the sign of the relationship is inverted in the first repeated PD game, showing that high reasoning ability individuals better adjust their behavior to the characteristics of the game they are playing. In this sense, the joint effect of reasoning ability and altruism is not linear, with reasoning ability counteracting the cooperative effect of altruism in the one-shot game and reinforcing it in the first repeated game. However, experience playing the repeated PD games takes over the two individual characteristics in explaining individual and paired cooperation. Thus, in a (PD) setting, altruism and reasoning ability significantly affect behavior in single encounters, while in repeated interactions individual and paired cooperation reach similarly high levels independently of these individual characteristics.
Not all Prisoner’s Dilemma games are equal: Incentives, social preferences, and cooperation
Decision, 2017
The Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) is a classic decision problem where two players simultaneously must decide whether to cooperate or to act in their own narrow self-interest. The PD game has been used to model many naturally occurring interactive situations, at the personal, organizational and social levels, in which there exists a tension between individual material gain and the common good. At least two factors may influence the emergence of cooperative behavior in this well known collective action problem: the incentive structure of the game itself, and the intrinsic social preferences of each of the players. We present a framework that integrates these two factors in an effort to account for patterns of high or low cooperation from repeated choice interactions. In an experiment using a collection of different PD games, and a measure of individual social preferences, we identify regions of PD games in which: (1) cooperation is independent of social preferences; (2) nice people can be exploited; and (3) being nice is consistently rewarded.
Risk, Temptation, and Efficiency in Prisoner's Dilemmas
2020
We examine the effect of payoff variations on cooperation in one-shot prisoner's dilemma games. We focus on three factors: risk, temptation, and efficiency, which we vary as orthogonal treatments. We find that temptation has the largest impact on cooperation. Temptation directly deters cooperation and indirectly harms cooperation by lowering beliefs about the opponent's cooperativeness. Efficiency indirectly affects cooperation through beliefs, but the magnitude of the effect is relatively small compared to temptation. Risk does not have a significant effect on cooperation. Our finding suggests that curbing the level of temptation is the most important way to improve cooperation in social dilemmas.
The impact of personality on behavior in five Prisoner's Dilemma games
Journal of Economic Psychology, 1999
There is a huge body of literature on both theoretical and experimental research of behavior in Prisoner's Dilemma and similar non-cooperative settings. Despite this impressive stock of knowledge, our understanding of the determinants of (non-)cooperative behavior remains limited. An important reason is that the economic approach tends to start from the untenable assumption of the homo anonymous. The purpose of the present study is to explore the potential gain of cross-fertilizing insights from economics and psychology by relaxing this assumption in a market setting (a Prisoner's Dilemma ± duopoly pricing) game. More speci®cally, it is argued that economic agents dier as to their inclination toward cooperation. To analyze this issue, we conducted an experiment at the University Maastricht. We investigate the eect of personality on competitive versus cooperative behavior in ®ve Prisoner's Dilemma games. Speci®cally, the paper deals with four personality traits: locus of control, selfmonitoring, type-A behavior and sensation seeking. The experiment clearly shows that personality matters. By way of appraisal, the implications of our ®ndings are discussed. Ó 43 3 883806. 0167-4870/99/$ ± see front matter Ó 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 6 7 -4 8 7 0 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 1 2 -4 JEL classi®cation: L2; M2
Causal attribution of choice behavior in three N-Person Prisoner's Dilemmas
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1990
The major purpose of the present study was to compare the causal attributions made by Cooperators and Defectors for a cooperative and a noncooperative target in an N-Person Prisoner's Dilemma. Factor analyses of attributions yielded two factors associated with the target's intrapersonal processes. One intrapersonal factor was a combination of weakness and lack of intelligence, labeled Ignorance, and the second was related to good versus bad, labeled Concern for Others. Among Cooperators, noncooperation was attributed more than cooperation to Ignorance. Defectors did just the opposite. This supports the idea that one's own predisposition prescribes criteria for rational choice in Prisoner's Dilemma. Both Cooperators and Defectors attributed cooperation more than noncooperation to Concern for Others. However, Cooperators made the largest discriminations on this factor. The above findings were observed in three N-Person Prisoner's Dilemmas varying in the extent to which Fear and Greed could be the cause of noncooperation. In addition to Ignorance and Concern for Others, factor analyses revealed two factors associated with the situational pressures of Fear and Greed in the payoff matrix itself. The different dilemmas appeared to affect both Cooperators' and Defectors' attributions to Fear and Greed in a manner consistent with their underlying game theoretical differences. 0 1990
Behavioural Consistency within the Prisoner'S Dilemma Game: The Role of Personality and Situation
European Journal of Personality, 2018
Mixed–motive games represent situations that confront people with a conflict between cooperative and non–cooperative alternatives. Despite this common basis, recent research has shown that the consistency of people's choices across different mixed–motive games is rather low. The present research examined behavioural consistency within the same mixed–motive game, by presenting participants with a series of one–shot Prisoner's Dilemma Games. Across this set of games, payoffs were manipulated in order to intensify or weaken the conflict between self and the other party while maintaining the game's underlying structure. Our findings indicate that significant differences in choice behaviour are observed as a function of both situational (i.e. manipulations of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game's payoff structure) and personality differences (i.e. individual differences in personality and motivational traits). Moreover, our included situational variables and personality featu...
Risk, Temptation, and Efficiency in the One-Shot Prisoner's Dilemma
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021
The prisoner's dilemma (PD) is arguably the most important model of social dilemmas, but our knowledge about how a PD's material payoff structure affects cooperation is incomplete. In this paper we investigate the effect of variation in material payoffs on cooperation, focussing on oneshot PD games where efficiency requires mutual cooperation. Following Mengel (2018) we vary three payoff indices. Indices of risk and temptation capture the unilateral incentives to defect against defectors and co-operators respectively, while an index of efficiency captures the gains from cooperation. We conduct two studies: first, varying the payoff indices over a large range and, second, in a novel orthogonal design that allows us to measure the effect of one payoff index while holding the others constant. In the second study we also compare a student and non-student subject pool, which allows us to assess generalizability of results. In both studies we find that temptation reduces cooperation. In neither study, nor in either subject pool of our second study, do we find a significant effect of risk. JEL-Codes: A130, C910.