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Resilient cooperators stabilize long-run cooperation in the finitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma.

ABSTRACT: Learning in finitely repeated games of cooperation remains poorly understood in part because their dynamics play out over a timescale exceeding that of traditional lab experiments. Here, we report results of a virtual lab experiment in which 94 subjects play up to 400 ten-round games of Prisoner's Dilemma over the course of twenty consecutive weekdays. Consistent with previous work, the typical round of first defection moves earlier for several days; however, this unravelling process stabilizes after roughly one week. Analysing individual strategies, we find that approximately 40% of players behave as resilient cooperators who avoid unravelling even at significant cost to themselves. Finally, using a standard learning model we predict that a sufficiently large minority of resilient cooperators can permanently stabilize unravelling among a majority of rational players. These results shed hopeful light on the long-term dynamics of cooperation, and demonstrate the importance of long-run experiments.

SUBMITTER: Mao A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5241863 | biostudies-other | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Resilient cooperators stabilize long-run cooperation in the finitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma.

Mao Andrew A Dworkin Lili L Suri Siddharth S Watts Duncan J DJ

Nature communications 20170113

Learning in finitely repeated games of cooperation remains poorly understood in part because their dynamics play out over a timescale exceeding that of traditional lab experiments. Here, we report results of a virtual lab experiment in which 94 subjects play up to 400 ten-round games of Prisoner's Dilemma over the course of twenty consecutive weekdays. Consistent with previous work, the typical round of first defection moves earlier for several days; however, this unravelling process stabilizes ...[more]

PMID: 28082739

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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.

Dataset Information

Resilient cooperators stabilize long-run cooperation in the finitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma.

Publications

Resilient cooperators stabilize long-run cooperation in the finitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma.

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