IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0134128.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Tit-for-Tat the Answer? On the Conclusions Drawn from Axelrod's Tournaments

Author

Listed:
  • Amnon Rapoport
  • Darryl A Seale
  • Andrew M Colman

Abstract

Axelrod’s celebrated Prisoner’s Dilemma computer tournaments, published in the early 1980s, were designed to find effective ways of acting in everyday interactions with the strategic properties of the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game. The winner of both tournaments was tit-for-tat, a program that cooperates on the first round and then, on every subsequent round, copies the co-player’s choice from the previous round. This has been interpreted as evidence that tit-for-tat is an effective general-purpose strategy. By re-analyzing data from the first tournament and some more recent data, we provide new results suggesting that the efficacy of tit-for-tat is contingent on the design of the tournament, the criterion used to determine success, and the particular values chosen for the Prisoner’s Dilemma payoff matrix. We argue that this places in doubt the generality of the results and the policy implications drawn from them.

Suggested Citation

  • Amnon Rapoport & Darryl A Seale & Andrew M Colman, 2015. "Is Tit-for-Tat the Answer? On the Conclusions Drawn from Axelrod's Tournaments," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-11, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0134128
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134128
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134128
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134128&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0134128?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Li, Ya & Lan, Xin & Deng, Xinyang & Sadiq, Rehan & Deng, Yong, 2014. "Comprehensive consideration of strategy updating promotes cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 403(C), pages 284-292.
    2. Christoph Adami & Arend Hintze, 2013. "Evolutionary instability of zero-determinant strategies demonstrates that winning is not everything," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 4(1), pages 1-8, October.
    3. Jonathan Bendor & Roderick M. Kramer & Suzanne Stout, 1991. "When in Doubt..," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(4), pages 691-719, December.
    4. Jonathan Bendor, 1993. "Uncertainty and the Evolution of Cooperation," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 37(4), pages 709-734, December.
    5. Hilbe, Christian & Traulsen, Arne & Sigmund, Karl, 2015. "Partners or rivals? Strategies for the iterated prisoner's dilemma," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 41-52.
    6. Jianlei Zhang & Chunyan Zhang & Tianguang Chu & Franz J Weissing, 2014. "Cooperation in Networks Where the Learning Environment Differs from the Interaction Environment," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-8, March.
    7. Francis A. Beer, 1986. "Games and Metaphors," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 30(1), pages 171-191, March.
    8. Steven E. Phelan & Richard J. Arend & Darryl A. Seale, 2005. "Using an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma with Exit Option to Study Alliance Behavior: Results of a Tournament and Simulation," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 339-356, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Evans, Alecia & Sesmero, Juan, 2022. "Cooperation in Social Dilemmas with Correlated Noisy Payoffs: Theory and Experimental Evidence," 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Austin, Texas 322804, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Masahiko Ueda & Toshiyuki Tanaka, 2020. "Linear algebraic structure of zero-determinant strategies in repeated games," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-13, April.
    3. Marc Harper & Vincent Knight & Martin Jones & Georgios Koutsovoulos & Nikoleta E Glynatsi & Owen Campbell, 2017. "Reinforcement learning produces dominant strategies for the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(12), pages 1-33, December.
    4. Fiona McGillivray & Alastair Smith, 2005. "The Impact of Leadership Turnover and Domestic Institutions on International Cooperation," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 49(5), pages 639-660, October.
    5. Evans, Alecia & Sesmero, Juan Pablo, 2022. "Noisy Payoffs in an Infinitely Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma – Experimental Evidence," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322434, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:4:y:2009:i:5:p:363-384 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Howard Kunreuther & Gabriel Silvasi & Eric T. Bradlow & Dylan Small, 2007. "Deterministic and Stochastic Prisoner's Dilemma Games: Experiments in Interdependent Security," NBER Technical Working Papers 0341, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Howard Kunreuther & Gabriel Silvasi & Eric T. Bradlow & Dylan Small, 2009. "Bayesian analysis of deterministic and stochastic prisoner's dilemma games," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 4(5), pages 363-384, August.
    9. M.C. Boerlijst & M.A. Nowak & K. Sigmund, 1997. "Equal Pay for all Prisoners/ The Logic of Contrition," Working Papers ir97073, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
    10. Jianzhong Wu & Robert Axelrod, 1995. "How to Cope with Noise in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 39(1), pages 183-189, March.
    11. Curtis S. Signorino, 1996. "Simulating International Cooperation under Uncertainty," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 40(1), pages 152-205, March.
    12. Henrich, Joseph, 2004. "Reply," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 127-143, January.
    13. Pradiptyo, Rimawan & Sasmitasiwi, Banoon & Sahadewo, Gumilang Aryo, 2011. "Evidence of homo economicus? Findings from experiment on evolutionary prisoners' dilemma game," MPRA Paper 30480, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. McAvoy, Alex & Hauert, Christoph, 2017. "Autocratic strategies for alternating games," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 13-22.
    15. Steven T. Schwartz & Richard A. Young, 2002. "A Laboratory Investigation of Verification and Reputation Formation in a Repeated Joint Investment Setting," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(2), pages 311-342, June.
    16. Yohsuke Murase & Seung Ki Baek, 2021. "Friendly-rivalry solution to the iterated n-person public-goods game," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(1), pages 1-17, January.
    17. Cosmin-Florin LEHENE & Anca BORZA, 2018. "Problems In Strategic Alliances – Should We Terminate The Collaboration? Empirical Evidence From North-West Region Romania," Management and Marketing Journal, University of Craiova, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 0(1), pages 7-29, May.
    18. Huang, Keke & Liu, Yishun & Zhang, Yichi & Yang, Chunhua & Wang, Zhen, 2018. "Understanding cooperative behavior of agents with heterogeneous perceptions in dynamic networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 509(C), pages 234-240.
    19. Olivier Compte & Andrew Postlewaite, 2007. "Effecting Cooperation," PIER Working Paper Archive 09-019, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 29 May 2009.
    20. Philip Streich & Jack S. Levy, 2007. "Time Horizons, Discounting, and Intertemporal Choice," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 51(2), pages 199-226, April.
    21. Michael W. Macy, 1997. "Identity, Interest And Emergent Rationality," Rationality and Society, , vol. 9(4), pages 427-448, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0134128. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.