scholarly journals Conditional Cooperation and Betrayal Aversion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin P. Cubitt ◽  
Simon Gachter ◽  
Simone Quercia
Author(s):  
Robin Cubitt ◽  
Simon Gachter ◽  
Simone Quercia

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin P. Cubitt ◽  
Simon Gachter ◽  
Simone Quercia

2017 ◽  
Vol 141 ◽  
pp. 110-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Cubitt ◽  
Simon Gächter ◽  
Simone Quercia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Seyhun Saral

Conditional cooperation has been a common explanation for the observed cooperation, and its decline in social dilemma experiments. Numerous studies showed that most of the experimental subjects can be categorized into three types: conditional cooperators, self-maximizers and hump-shaped (triangle) cooperators. In this study, I investigate conditional strategy types and their role on the emergence of cooperation and their evolutionary success. For this purpose, I use an extension of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game. The agents are characterized by their initial move and their conditional responses to each level of cooperation. By using simulations, I estimate the likelihood of cooperation for different probability of continuations.I show that, when the continuation probability is sufficiently large, high levels cooperation is achieved. In this case, the most successful strategies are those who employ an all-or-none type of conditional cooperation, followed by perfect conditional cooperators. In intermediate levels of continuation probabilities, however, hump-shaped contributor types are the ones that are most likely to thrive, followed by imperfect conditional cooperators. Those agents cooperate in a medium level of cooperation within themselves and each other. The results explain the existence of hump-shaped type of cooperators with a purely payoff-based reasoning, as opposed to previous attempts to explain this strategy with psychological mechanisms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ozan Isler ◽  
Simon Gächter ◽  
A. John Maule ◽  
Chris Starmer

AbstractHumans frequently cooperate for collective benefit, even in one-shot social dilemmas. This provides a challenge for theories of cooperation. Two views focus on intuitions but offer conflicting explanations. The Social Heuristics Hypothesis argues that people with selfish preferences rely on cooperative intuitions and predicts that deliberation reduces cooperation. The Self-Control Account emphasizes control over selfish intuitions and is consistent with strong reciprocity—a preference for conditional cooperation in one-shot dilemmas. Here, we reconcile these explanations with each other as well as with strong reciprocity. We study one-shot cooperation across two main dilemma contexts, provision and maintenance, and show that cooperation is higher in provision than maintenance. Using time-limit manipulations, we experimentally study the cognitive processes underlying this robust result. Supporting the Self-Control Account, people are intuitively selfish in maintenance, with deliberation increasing cooperation. In contrast, consistent with the Social Heuristics Hypothesis, deliberation tends to increase the likelihood of free-riding in provision. Contextual differences between maintenance and provision are observed across additional measures: reaction time patterns of cooperation; social dilemma understanding; perceptions of social appropriateness; beliefs about others’ cooperation; and cooperation preferences. Despite these dilemma-specific asymmetries, we show that preferences, coupled with beliefs, successfully predict the high levels of cooperation in both maintenance and provision dilemmas. While the effects of intuitions are context-dependent and small, the widespread preference for strong reciprocity is the primary driver of one-shot cooperation. We advance the Contextualised Strong Reciprocity account as a unifying framework and consider its implications for research and policy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 210653
Author(s):  
Shuangmei Ma ◽  
Boyu Zhang ◽  
Shinan Cao ◽  
Jun S. Liu ◽  
Wen-Xu Wang

Cooperation is one of the key collective behaviours of human society. Despite discoveries of several social mechanisms underpinning cooperation, relatively little is known about how our neural functions affect cooperative behaviours. Here, we study the effect of a main neural function, working-memory capacity, on cooperation in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma experiments. Our experimental paradigm overcomes the obstacles in measuring and changing subjects' working-memory capacity. We find that the optimal cooperation level occurs when subjects remember two previous rounds of information, and cooperation increases abruptly from no memory capacity to minimal memory capacity. The results can be explained by memory-based conditional cooperation of subjects. We propose evolutionary models based on replicator dynamics and Markov processes, respectively, which are in good agreement with experimental results of different memory capacities. Our experimental findings differ from previous hypotheses and predictions of existent models and theories, and suggest a neural basis and evolutionary roots of cooperation beyond cultural influences.


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