Social surplus determines cooperation rates in the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Charness, Gary; Rigotti, Luca; Rustichini, Aldo
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); University of Pittsburgh; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2016.08.010
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 113-124
• 关键词: Prisoner's dilemma; Cooperation rates; beliefs; experiment

摘要

We provide evidence on how cooperation rates vary across payoff parameters in the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD), using four one-shot games that differ only in the payoffs from mutual cooperation. In our experiment, participants play only the PD game, and play the game once and only once, so there are no potential confounds or methodological issues. Our results show that higher monetary payoffs from cooperation are associated with substantially higher cooperation rates, which increase monotonically from 23% to 60%. Participants' beliefs about cooperation rates track closely actual cooperation rates: higher cooperation is expected from others when mutual cooperation payoffs are higher. This is true also for participants who, in a follow-up experiment, only make guesses about the choices of others. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.