IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v92y2010i1p179-187.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Friend or Foe? Cooperation and Learning in High-Stakes Games

Author

Listed:
  • Felix Oberholzer-Gee

    (Harvard University)

  • Joel Waldfogel

    (University of Pennsylvania)

  • Matthew W. White

    (University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

Why do people frequently cooperate in defiance of their immediate incentives? One explanation is that individuals are conditionally cooperative. As an explanation of behavior in one-shot settings, such preferences require individuals to be able to discern their opponents' preferences. Using data from a television game show, we provide evidence about how individuals implement conditionally cooperative preferences. We show that contestants forgo large sums of money to be cooperative; they cooperate at heightened levels when their opponents are predictably cooperative; and they fare worse when their observable characteristics predict less cooperation because opponents avoid cooperating with them. © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Joel Waldfogel & Matthew W. White, 2010. "Friend or Foe? Cooperation and Learning in High-Stakes Games," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(1), pages 179-187, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:92:y:2010:i:1:p:179-187
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/rest.2009.10174
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Donja Darai & Silvia Gr�tz, 2010. "Determinants of Successful Cooperation in a Face-to-Face Social Dilemma," SOI - Working Papers 1006, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich, revised Nov 2010.
    2. Larney, Andrea & Rotella, Amanda & Barclay, Pat, 2019. "Stake size effects in ultimatum game and dictator game offers: A meta-analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 61-72.
    3. Emin Karagözoğlu & Ümit Barış Urhan, 2017. "The Effect of Stake Size in Experimental Bargaining and Distribution Games: A Survey," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 285-325, March.
    4. Uyanga Turmunkh & Martijn J. van den Assem & Dennie van Dolder, 2019. "Malleable Lies: Communication and Cooperation in a High Stakes TV Game Show," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(10), pages 4795-4812, October.
    5. Stephen Dobson & John Goddard, 2018. "Games of Two Halves: Non-Experimental Evidence on Cooperation, Defection and the Prisoner’s Dilemma," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 10(3), pages 285-312, May.
    6. Geerling, Wayne & Magee, Gary B. & Brooks, Robert, 2015. "Cooperation, defection and resistance in Nazi Germany," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 125-139.
    7. Buser, Thomas & van den Assem, Martijn J. & van Dolder, Dennie, 2023. "Gender and willingness to compete for high stakes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 350-370.
    8. Gurevich, Gregory & Kliger, Doron, 2013. "The Manipulation: Socio-economic decision making," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 171-184.
    9. Fehr, Ernst & Tougareva, Elena & Fischbacher, Urs, 2014. "Do high stakes and competition undermine fair behaviour? Evidence from Russia," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 354-363.
    10. Chan, Ho Fai & Savage, David A. & Torgler, Benno, 2019. "There and back again: Adaptation after repeated rule changes of the game," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PB).
    11. Jana Vyrastekova & Esther-Mirjam Sent & Irene van Staveren, 2015. "Gender Beliefs and Cooperation in a Public Goods Game," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(2), pages 1148-1153.
    12. Martijn J. van den Assem & Dennie van Dolder & Richard H. Thaler, 2012. "Split or Steal? Cooperative Behavior When the Stakes Are Large," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(1), pages 2-20, January.
    13. Gonzalez, Luis J. & Castaneda, Marco & Scott, Frank, 2019. "Solving the simultaneous truel in The Weakest Link: Nash or revenge?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 56-72.

    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:tpr:restat:v:92:y:2010:i:1:p:179-187. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.