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When is the Risk of Cooperation Worth Taking? The Prisoner’s Dilemma as a Game of Multiple Motives

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  • Christoph Engel

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn)

  • Lilia Zhurakhovska

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn)

Abstract

Both in the field and in the lab, participants frequently cooperate, despite the fact that the situation can be modelled as a simultaneous, symmetric prisoner’s dilemma. This experiment manipulates the payoff in case both players defect, and explains the degree of cooperation by a combination of five motives: the size of gains from cooperation, expectations about cooperativeness in the population in question, the degree of risk and loss aversion, and the degree by which a participant is averse to inequity. Information about these motivational forces stems from additional within subjects tests. All five factors are significant only if one controls for all the other motives, which suggests that a prisoner’s dilemma is a game jointly characterised by these five motives. The need to control for the remaining explanations seems to be the reason why earlier attempts at explaining choices in the prisoner’s dilemma with personality have not been successful.

Suggested Citation

  • Christoph Engel & Lilia Zhurakhovska, 2012. "When is the Risk of Cooperation Worth Taking? The Prisoner’s Dilemma as a Game of Multiple Motives," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2012_16, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Aug 2013.
    • Handle: RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2012_16
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    2. Angeliki Antoniou, 2019. "Compatibility of Small Team Personalities in Computer-Based Tasks," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, May.
    3. Capraro, Valerio & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael & Ruiz-Martos, Maria J., 2020. "Preferences for efficiency, rather than preferences for morality, drive cooperation in the one-shot Stag-Hunt game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    4. Simon Gaechter & Kyeongtae Lee & Martin Sefton & Till O. Weber, 2021. "Risk, Temptation, and Efficiency in the One-Shot Prisoner's Dilemma," CESifo Working Paper Series 9449, CESifo.
    5. Simon Gaechter & Kyeongtae Lee & Martin Sefton, 2020. "Risk, Temptation, and Efficiency in Prisoner's Dilemmas," Discussion Papers 2020-15, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    6. Valerio Capraro & Joseph Y Halpern, 2019. "Translucent players: Explaining cooperative behavior in social dilemmas," Rationality and Society, , vol. 31(4), pages 371-408, November.
    7. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth, 2013. "Selfishness As a Potential Cause of Crime. A Prison Experiment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2013_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    8. Li, Yumeng & Wang, Hanchen & Du, Wenbo & Perc, Matjaž & Cao, Xianbin & Zhang, Jun, 2019. "Resonance-like cooperation due to transaction costs in the prisoner’s dilemma game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 521(C), pages 248-257.
    9. Sudipta Mukherjee, 2022. "Consumer altruism and risk taking: why do altruistic consumers take more risks?," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 19(4), pages 781-803, December.
    10. Antoni Bosch-Domènech & Joaquim Silvestre, 2017. "The role of frames, numbers and risk in the frequency of cooperation," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 64(3), pages 245-267, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    efficiency; Risk aversion; Conditional Cooperation; prisoner’s dilemma; Belief; Loss Aversion; Risky Dictator Game;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

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