Resilient Cooperators Stabilize Long-Run Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma
Nature Communications 8, Article number: 13800 (2017), DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13800
10 Pages Posted: 18 Aug 2016 Last revised: 15 Jan 2017
Date Written: August 10, 2016
Abstract
Learning in finitely repeated games of cooperation remains poorly understood in part because their dynamics play out over a timescale exceeding that of traditional lab experiments. Here, we report results of a virtual lab experiment in which 94 subjects play up to 400 ten-round games of Prisoner’s Dilemma over the course of twenty consecutive weekdays. Consistent with previous work, the typical round of first defection moves earlier for several days; however, this unraveling process stabilizes after roughly one week. Analysing individual strategies, we find that approximately 40% of players behave as resilient cooperators who avoid unraveling even at significant cost to themselves. Finally, using a standard learning model we predict that a sufficiently large minority of resilient cooperators can permanently stabilize unraveling among a majority of rational players. These results shed hopeful light on the long-term dynamics of cooperation, and demonstrate the importance of long-run experiments.
Keywords: virtual lab, behavioral experiment, cooperation, prisoner's dilemma, economics, human behavior
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