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The expected prisoner's dilemma - With rationally arising cooperation.

ABSTRACT: Currently, there is no satisfying answer to how cooperation arises rationally in a single-play prisoner's dilemma game with complete information. When player types are known, as well as payoffs and actions, economic analysis through payoff-optimizing computation does not provide a clear path for cooperation. We propose a new form of game-the 'expected' game-and illustrate its implications for theory and practice based on the prisoner's dilemma example. We prove that cooperation can be a rational choice for players in reality in such games defined by a weighted set of payoffs of two or more different reference games.

SUBMITTER: Arend RJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7526889 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The expected prisoner's dilemma - With rationally arising cooperation.

Arend Richard J RJ

PloS one 20200930 9

Currently, there is no satisfying answer to how cooperation arises rationally in a single-play prisoner's dilemma game with complete information. When player types are known, as well as payoffs and actions, economic analysis through payoff-optimizing computation does not provide a clear path for cooperation. We propose a new form of game-the 'expected' game-and illustrate its implications for theory and practice based on the prisoner's dilemma example. We prove that cooperation can be a rational ...[more]

PMID: 32997678

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Project description: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.

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The expected prisoner's dilemma - With rationally arising cooperation.

Publications

The expected prisoner's dilemma - With rationally arising cooperation.

Similar Datasets

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