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The “Human Factor” in Prisoner’s Dilemma Cooperation

Author

Listed:
  • Iván Barreda-Tarrazona

    (LEE and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain)

  • Ainhoa Jaramillo-Gutiérrez

    (LEE and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain)

  • Marina Pavan

    (LEE & Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón-Spain)

  • Gerardo Sabater-Grande

    (LEE and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain)

Abstract

We design a rich setting to study cooperation in the finitely Repeated Prisoners’ Dilemma (RPD), controlling for beliefs, emotions, and personal characteristics. In the baseline, the subjects play one-shot and repeated games with other human subjects. In the treatment, participants play against an artificial intelligence (AI) trained upon data from the previous “all human” sessions to mimic human decisions. We design the experiment so that our sessions are homogeneous in terms of gender composition, altruism, and reasoning ability. In all games, we elicit players’ beliefs regarding cooperation using an incentive compatible method. Besides, after each individual decision, we collect self-reported information on the main reason for it (rational or emotional). We find that expectations of partner cooperation at the beginning of each task are not significantly different between treatments. Despite this, we observe that initial human cooperation is actually much higher with other humans than with an AI. Cooperation continues to be higher in all periods of the RPD tasks: cooperation rates range between 60% and 80% in the baseline, while they range between 20% and 40% in the AI treatment. Last, decisions appear to be less emotion-driven in the AI treatment. Lack of empathy with, rather than fear of, the machine seems to be driving the results.

Suggested Citation

  • Iván Barreda-Tarrazona & Ainhoa Jaramillo-Gutiérrez & Marina Pavan & Gerardo Sabater-Grande, 2021. "The “Human Factor” in Prisoner’s Dilemma Cooperation," Working Papers 2021/10, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    • Handle: RePEc:jau:wpaper:2021/10
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

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