IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp15492.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Beliefs, Learning, and Personality in the Indefinitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma

Author

Listed:
  • Gill, David

    (Purdue University)

  • Rosokha, Yaroslav

    (Purdue University)

Abstract

We aim to understand the role and evolution of beliefs in the indefinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma (IRPD). To do so, we elicit beliefs about the supergame strategies chosen by others. We find that heterogeneity in beliefs and changes in beliefs with experience are central to understanding behavior and learning in the IRPD. Beliefs strongly predict cooperation, initial beliefs match behavior quite well, most subjects choose strategies that perform well given their beliefs, and beliefs respond to experience while becoming more accurate over time. Finally, we uncover a novel mechanism whereby trusting subjects learn to cooperate through their interaction with experience.

Suggested Citation

  • Gill, David & Rosokha, Yaroslav, 2022. "Beliefs, Learning, and Personality in the Indefinitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma," IZA Discussion Papers 15492, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15492
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp15492.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Maximilian Andres, 2023. "Communication in the Infinitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Theory and Experiments," Papers 2304.12297, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma; cooperation; optimism; belief elicitation; supergame strategies; experimentation; trust; experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp15492. 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    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.