Cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma
- Cooperation is — despite not being predicted by game theory — a widely documented aspect of human behaviour in Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) situations. This article presents a comparison between subjects restricted to playing pure strategies and subjects allowed to play mixed strategies in a one-shot symmetric PD laboratory experiment. Subjects interact with 10 other subjects and take their decisions all at once. Because subjects in the mixed-strategy treatment group are allowed to condition their level of cooperation more precisely on their beliefs about their counterparts’ level of cooperation, we predicted the cooperation rate in the mixed-strategy treatment group to be higher than in the pure-strategy control group. The results of our experiment reject our prediction: even after controlling for beliefs about the other subjects’ level of cooperation, we find that cooperation in the mixed-strategy group is lower than in the pure-strategy group. We also find, however, that subjects in the mixedstrategy group condition their cooperativeCooperation is — despite not being predicted by game theory — a widely documented aspect of human behaviour in Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) situations. This article presents a comparison between subjects restricted to playing pure strategies and subjects allowed to play mixed strategies in a one-shot symmetric PD laboratory experiment. Subjects interact with 10 other subjects and take their decisions all at once. Because subjects in the mixed-strategy treatment group are allowed to condition their level of cooperation more precisely on their beliefs about their counterparts’ level of cooperation, we predicted the cooperation rate in the mixed-strategy treatment group to be higher than in the pure-strategy control group. The results of our experiment reject our prediction: even after controlling for beliefs about the other subjects’ level of cooperation, we find that cooperation in the mixed-strategy group is lower than in the pure-strategy group. We also find, however, that subjects in the mixedstrategy group condition their cooperative behaviour more closely on their beliefs than in the pure-strategy group. In the mixed-strategy group, most subjects choose intermediate levels of cooperation.…
| Author details: | Leonie Heuer, Andreas OrlandORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.182142 |
| ISSN: | 2054-5703 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Royal Society Open Science |
| Subtitle (English): | an experimental comparison between pure and mixed strategies |
| Publisher: | Royal Soc. Publ. |
| Place of publishing: | London |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of first publication: | 2019/07/10 |
| Publication year: | 2019 |
| Release date: | 2019/10/07 |
| Tag: | Prisoner's Dilemma; cooperation; experiment; human behaviour |
| Volume: | 6 |
| Number of pages: | 9 |
| Funding institution: | Universität Potsdam |
| Funding number: | PA 2019_52 |
| Organizational units: | Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Wirtschaftswissenschaften |
| DDC classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 50 Naturwissenschaften / 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik |
| 6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 60 Technik / 600 Technik, Technologie | |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Grantor: | Publikationsfonds der Universität Potsdam |
| Publishing method: | Open Access |
| License (German): |  CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |
| External remark: | Zweitveröffentlichung in der Schriftenreihe Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe ; 107 |
