Risk, Temptation, and Efficiency in the One-Shot Prisoner's Dilemma

Abstract

The prisoner's dilemma (PD) is arguably the most important model of social dilemmas, but our knowledge about how a PD's material payoff structure affects cooperation is incomplete. In this paper we investigate the effect of variation in material payoffs on cooperation, focussing on oneshot PD games where efficiency requires mutual cooperation. Following Mengel (2018) we vary three payoff indices. Indices of risk and temptation capture the unilateral incentives to defect against defectors and co-operators respectively, while an index of efficiency captures the gains from cooperation. We conduct two studies: first, varying the payoff indices over a large range and, second, in a novel orthogonal design that allows us to measure the effect of one payoff index while holding the others constant. In the second study we also compare a student and non-student subject pool, which allows us to assess generalizability of results. In both studies we find that temptation reduces cooperation. In neither study, nor in either subject pool of our second study, do we find a significant effect of risk. JEL-Codes: A130, C910.

Moral reasoning and moral competence as predictors of cooperative behavior in a social dilemma

“…org/). On this webpage, researchers can program and run interactive online experiments with multiple participants 56,57 . We designed three multiplayer scenarios, for a group of six, eight, and ten players, respectively, in which each participant plays one round of the PDG with each of the other participants.…”

Social Preferences and the Variability of Conditional Cooperation

“…AMT workers are demographically more diverse and older than typical student subject pools. From the results of related research studying cooperation rates in simultaneous PDs (Gächter, et al (2021)) and public goods games (Arechar, et al (2018)) we expect AMT workers to exhibit a higher level of cooperativeness than the younger UoN student subject pool. Comparing AMT workers and…”

“…4 Several studies examine how decisions in the simultaneous prisoner's dilemmas are influenced by payoff variations (e.g., Ahn, et al (2001); Au, et al (2012); Charness, et al (2016); Engel and Zhurakhovska (2016); Mengel (2018); Ng and Au (2016); Schmidt, et al (2001); Vlaev and Chater (2006)). See Gächter, et al (2021) for a discussion of these papers and a systematic experimental analysis of the role of payoff parameters for level. Hedegaard, et al (2021) elicit distributional preferences in a representative Danish sample and then use them to explain behavior in trust and public goods games.…”

“…report a 20% dropout rate in their interactive four-player public goods game, andGächter, et al (2021) reports a 24% dropout rate in their interactive eight simultaneous prisoner's dilemma games.Thus…”

“…This is the same parameterization used inGächter, et al (2021) for studying cooperation in simultaneous PDs.…”