Perfect and Imperfect Strangers in Social Dilemmas

Abstract

This paper focuses on social dilemma games where players may or may not meet the same partner again in the future. In line with the notion that contagion of cooperation is more likely the higher the likelihood of being re-matched with the same partner in the future, both a novel experiment and a meta-study document higher cooperation rates if this likelihood is sufficiently high.

Dynamic contact effects: Individuals’ positive and negative contact history influences intergroup contact effects in a behavioral game.

“…Avoiding retaliation effects is ensured, by a low rematching probability. Previous evidence demonstrates that the results of imperfect stranger matching at a rematching probability of .2 or lower equal those of perfect stranger settings (see Ghidoni et al, 2018). As participants played in groups of eight to 12 participants, the rematching probability between two rounds ranged from .14 to .09, and from .13 to .08, when playing outgroup rounds.…”

“…For Study 1 we used a continuous prisoner’s dilemma with a complete stranger procedure (Ghidoni et al, 2018), whereby participants are not only randomly assigned to a partner at the beginning of each round, but also know that they will never play against the same person twice. This is important, as we are interested in expectations and cooperation toward the group rather than a given individual, and thus wished to avoid retaliation effects, which might occur if a person expects to playing with the same person twice.…”