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Social Memory and Evidence from the Past

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Author Info
Luca Anderlini
Dino Gerardi
Roger Lagunoff () (Department of Economics, Georgetown University)

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Abstract

Examples of repeated destructive behavior abound throughout the history of human societies. This paper examines the role of social memory --- a society's vicarious beliefs about the past --- in creating and perpetuating destructive conflicts. We examine whether such behavior is consistent with the theory of rational strategic behavior. We analyze an infinite-horizon model in which two countries face off each period in an extended Prisoner's Dilemma game in which an additional possibility of mutually destructive ``all out war'' yields catastrophic consequence for both sides. Each country is inhabited by a dynastic sequence of individuals who care about future individuals in the same country, and can communicate with the next generation of their countrymen using private messages. The two countries' actions in each period also produce physical evidence; a sequence of informative but imperfect public signals that can be observed by all current and future individuals. We find that, provided the future is sufficiently important for all individuals, regardless of the precision of physical evidence from the past there is an equilibrium of the model in which the two countries' social memory is systematically wrong, and in which the two countries engage in all out war with arbitrarily high frequency. Surprisingly, we find that degrading the quality of information that individuals have about current decisions may ``improve'' social memory so that it can no longer be systematically wrong. This in turn ensures that arbitrarily frequent all out wars cannot take place. Classification-JEL Codes: C72, C79, D80, D83, D89

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Paper provided by Georgetown University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number gueconwpa~07-07-01.

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Date of creation: 01 Jul 2007
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Handle: RePEc:geo:guwopa:gueconwpa~07-07-01

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Keywords: Social Memory Private Communication Dynastic Games Physical Evidence

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Luca Anderlini & Dino Gerardi & Roger Lagunoff, 2008. "Communication and Learning," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1639, Cowles Foundation, Yale University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Guido Tabellini, . "Institutions and Culture," Working Papers 330, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University. [Downloadable!]
  3. Guido Tabellini, 2008. "The Scope of Cooperation: Values and Incentives," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo GmbH. [Downloadable!]
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