The impact of personality on behavior in five Prisoner's Dilemma games

Abstract

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Locus of control and learning to cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma game

“…The value of alpha calculated for this sample is well above the lower limits of acceptability, generally considered to be in the 0.50-0.60 range (Nunnally, 1978). The average Rotter score of the present subjects equals 11.51 (S.D.=3.37), which is in line with averages reported for other samples of similar subjects (Boone et al, 1999b).…”

“…In a previous experiment we found that, on average, internals played significantly more cooperatively than externals in a repeated PD game (Boone et al, 1999a(Boone et al, , 1999b. The findings also made clear that this difference was not the result of internals being more altruistic, but rather of their tendency to use behaviour strategically in order to control their environment to obtain valued outcomes.…”

“…First, the relatively high average number of cooperative choices made in baseline game I (5.74 and 6.53 in Experiments I and II, respectively) suggests that the present subjects have a more cooperative inclination than the students in a previous experiment [compare with Boone et al (1999b), where this average equalled 2.0]. A possible reason for this difference may be that the subjects in the current sample are management and organisation students, and not economics students as before.…”

“…Because the experiment aims at extending insights from previous work, the games and procedures we used in the present study are very similar to those in Boone et al (1999aBoone et al ( , 1999b. The experiment was conducted during a 4-week course on statistical methods for second-year students of management and organisation at the Dutch University of Groningen.…”

“…Specifically, we started a series of experiments with the purpose of investigating the behavioural implications of specific personality traits in a PD setting. We chose to focus on locus of control in the current paper because it is a fundamental personality trait, which has been shown to have important ramifications for behaviour in a social dilemma setting (Boone, De Brabander, & van Witteloostuijn, 1999a, 1999b. Before summarising the major findings of our previous work, recall that the locus of control construct refers to individual differences in a generalised belief in internal versus external control of reinforcements (Rotter, 1966).…”