IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/srbeha/v31y2014i2p327-334.html

Once Nice, Always Nice? Results on Factors Influencing Nice Behavior from an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Jürgen Fleiß
  • Ulrike Leopold‐Wildburger

Abstract

The reliability of human behavior in situations where cooperation is beneficial for all but is hindered by individual incentives not to cooperate is a central research question in economics and the social sciences. Little is known about how the interaction results of a subject with one partner may affect this subject's behavior when subsequently matched with a new partner. We extend this knowledge by studying the development of cooperation in a repeated prisoner's dilemma experiment. After several rounds, each subject is matched with a new partner. We analyse whether the interaction outcomes with the first partner lead subjects to change their behavior when they interact with the second partner. We focus on niceness as introduced by Axelrod and find statistically significant effects. Mutual cooperation with the first partner is positively correlated with the continuation of a nice strategy, whereas mutual defection leads subjects to give up their nice strategy. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Jürgen Fleiß & Ulrike Leopold‐Wildburger, 2014. "Once Nice, Always Nice? Results on Factors Influencing Nice Behavior from an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Experiment," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 327-334, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:srbeha:v:31:y:2014:i:2:p:327-334
    DOI: 10.1002/sres.2194
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2194
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sres.2194?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. Diethard Klatte & Hans-Jakob Lüthi & Karl Schmedders (ed.), 2012. "Operations Research Proceedings 2011," Operations Research Proceedings, Springer, edition 127, number 978-3-642-29210-1, December.
    2. Andreoni, James, 1988. "Why free ride? : Strategies and learning in public goods experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 291-304, December.
    3. Andreoni, James A & Miller, John H, 1993. "Rational Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Experimental Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(418), pages 570-585, May.
    4. Croson, Rachel T. A., 1996. "Partners and strangers revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 25-32, October.
    5. Pedro Dal Bo & Andrew Foster & Louis Putterman, 2010. "Institutions and Behavior: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Democracy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2205-2229, December.
    6. Fischbacher, Urs & Gachter, Simon & Fehr, Ernst, 2001. "Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 397-404, June.
    7. Redouan Bshary & Alexandra S. Grutter & Astrid S. T. Willener & Olof Leimar, 2008. "Pairs of cooperating cleaner fish provide better service quality than singletons," Nature, Nature, vol. 455(7215), pages 964-966, October.
    8. Paul E. Turner & Lin Chao, 1999. "Prisoner's dilemma in an RNA virus," Nature, Nature, vol. 398(6726), pages 441-443, April.
    9. Cooper, Russell & DeJong, Douglas V. & Forsythe, Robert & Ross, Thomas W., 1996. "Cooperation without Reputation: Experimental Evidence from Prisoner's Dilemma Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 187-218, February.
    10. Kirchkamp, Oliver & Nagel, Rosemarie, 2007. "Naive learning and cooperation in network experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 269-292, February.
    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. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gaechter, 2008. "Heterogeneous Social Preferences And The Dynamics Of Free Riding In Public Good Experiments," Discussion Papers 2008-07, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    2. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    3. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    4. Ernesto Reuben & Sigrid Suetens, 2012. "Revisiting strategic versus non-strategic cooperation," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(1), pages 24-43, March.
    5. Ghidoni, Riccardo & Cleave, Blair L. & Suetens, Sigrid, 2019. "Perfect and imperfect strangers in social dilemmas," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 148-159.
    6. Takafumi Yamakawa & Yoshitaka Okano & Tatsuyoshi Saijo, 2016. "Detecting motives for cooperation in public goods experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 500-512, June.
    7. Kurt A. Ackermann & Ryan O. Murphy, 2019. "Explaining Cooperative Behavior in Public Goods Games: How Preferences and Beliefs Affect Contribution Levels," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-34, March.
    8. Cox, Caleb A. & Stoddard, Brock, 2018. "Strategic thinking in public goods games with teams," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 31-43.
    9. Greiner, Ben & Vittoria Levati, M., 2005. "Indirect reciprocity in cyclical networks: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 711-731, October.
    10. Kamei, Kenju, 2016. "Information Disclosure and Cooperation in a Finitely-repeated Dilemma: Experimental Evidence," MPRA Paper 75100, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Thommes, Kirsten & Vyrastekova, Jana & Akkerman, Agnes, 2015. "Behavioral spillovers from freeriding in multilevel interactions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 78-87.
    12. Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, "undated". "Pro-Social Behavior, Reciprocity or Both?," IEW - Working Papers 107, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    13. Guillaume Fréchette, 2012. "Session-effects in the laboratory," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(3), pages 485-498, September.
    14. Robert Slonim, 2005. "Competing Against Experienced and Inexperienced Players," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 8(1), pages 55-75, April.
    15. Maximilian Andres, 2023. "Communication in the Infinitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Theory and Experiments," Papers 2304.12297, arXiv.org.
    16. Daley, Brendan & Sadowski, Philipp, 2017. "Magical thinking: A representation result," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(2), May.
    17. Redzo Mujcic & Andreas Leibbrandt, 2018. "Indirect Reciprocity and Prosocial Behaviour: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(611), pages 1683-1699, June.
    18. Yang, Luhe & Ning, Yongpeng & Zhang, Lianzhong, 2025. "Reconstruction of micro-dynamics characterizing human decision-making behavior in repeated social dilemmas," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 497(C).
    19. Jean-Robert Tyran & Kenju Kamei & Louis Putterman, 2011. "State or Nature? Formal vs. Informal Sanctioning in the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods," Vienna Economics Papers vie1104, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    20. Andreas Glöckner & Bernd Irlenbusch & Sebastian Kube & Andreas Nicklisch & Hans-Theo Normann, 2009. "Leading with(out) Sacrifice? A Public-Goods Experiment with a Super-Additive Player," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics 2009_08, Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.

    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:bla:srbeha:v:31:y:2014:i:2:p:327-334. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/1092-7026 .

    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.