TY  - RPRT
A1  - Bruttel, Lisa Verena
A1  - Felgendreher, Simon
A1  - Güth, Werner
A1  - Hertwig, Ralph
T1  - Strategic ignorance in repeated prisoners’ dilemma experiments and its effects on the dynamics of voluntary cooperation
T2  - CEPA Discussion Papers
N2  - Being ignorant of key aspects of a strategic interaction can represent an advantage rather than a handicap. We study one particular context in which ignorance can be beneficial: iterated strategic interactions in which voluntary cooperation may be sustained into the final round if players voluntarily forego knowledge about the time horizon. We experimentally examine this option to remain ignorant about the time horizon in a finitely repeated two-person prisoners’ dilemma game. We confirm that pairs without horizon knowledge avoid the drop in cooperation that otherwise occurs toward the end of the game. However, this effect is superposed by cooperation declining more rapidly in pairs without horizon knowledge during the middle phase of the game, especially if players do not know that the other player also wanted to remain ignorant of the time horizon.
T3  - CEPA Discussion Papers - 10 
KW  - strategic ignorance
KW  - cooperation
KW  - prisoners' dilemma
KW  - experiment
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-431881
SN  - 2628-653X
IS  - 10
ER  -