Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-f9bf7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-16T16:18:21.032Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The rise of cooperation in correlated matching prisoners dilemma: An experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Chun-Lei Yang ,
Ching-Syang Jack Yue  and
I-Tang Yu
Chun-Lei Yang*
Affiliation:
Research Center for Humanity and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Rd. Sec. 2, Taipei 115, Taiwan, ROC
Ching-Syang Jack Yue
Affiliation:
Department of Statistics, National Chengchi University, 64 Chi-Nan Rd. Sec. 2, Taipei 11623, Taiwan, ROC
I-Tang Yu
Affiliation:
Department of Statistics, Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC
*
e-mail: cly@gate.sinica.edu.tw
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recently, there has been a Renaissance for multi-level selection models to explain the persistence of unselfish behavior in social dilemmas, in which assortative/correlated matching plays an important role. In the current study of a multi-round prisoners’ dilemma experiment, we introduce two correlated matching procedures that match subjects with similar action histories together. We discover significant treatment effects, compared to the control procedure of random matching. Particularly with the weighted history matching procedure we find bifurcations regarding group outcomes. Some groups converge to the all-defection equilibrium even more pronouncedly than the control groups do, while other groups generate much higher rate of cooperation, which is also associated with higher relative reward for a typical cooperative action. All in all, the data show that cooperation does have a much better chance to persist in a correlated/assortative-matching environment, as predicted in the literature.

Keywords

Prisoners’ dilemmaCooperationExperimentUnselfish behaviorEvolutionAssortative matchingCorrelated matchingMulti-level selection

JEL classification

D74: Conflict • Conflict Resolution • Alliances • Revolutions C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior B52: Historical • Institutional • Evolutionary
Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 3 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Economic Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10683-006-9139-8.

References

Amann, E., & Yang, C.-L. (1998). Sophistication and the persistence of cooperation. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 37, 91–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreoni, J., & Miller, J. H. (1993). Rational cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma: experimental evidence. Economic Journal, 103, 570–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211, 1390–1396.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bergstrom, T. C., & Stark, O. (1993). How altruism can prevail in an evolutionary environment. American Economic Review, 83, 58–81.Google Scholar
Bergstrom, T. (2003). The algebra of assortative encounters and the evolution of cooperation. International Game Theory Review, 5(3), 211–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binmore, K., & Samuelson, L. (1992). Evolutionary stability in repeated games played by finite automata. Journal of Economic Theory, 57, 278–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolton, G. E., Katok, E., & Ockenfels, A. (2001). What's in a reputation? Indirect reciprocity in an image scoring game. working paper.Google Scholar
Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2002). The origins of human cooperation to appear. In Hammerstein, P. (Ed.), The genetic and cultural origins of cooperation. Cambridge: MIT press.Google Scholar
Brosig, J. (2002). Identifying cooperative behavior: some experimental results in a prisoner's dilemma game. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 47(3), 275–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camereer, C., & Knez, M. (2000). Increasing cooperation in prisoner's dilemmas by establishing a precedent of efficiency in coordination. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82, 194–216.Google Scholar
Copper, R., DeJong, D., Forsythe, R., & Ross, T. (1996). Cooperation without reputation: experimental evidence from prisoner's dilemma games. Games and Economic Behavior, 12, 187–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniel, W. W. (1990). Applied nonparametric statistics 2nd edn. Boston: PWS-KENT.Google Scholar
Ellison, G. (1994). Cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma with anonymous random matching. Review of Economic Studies, 61, 567–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eshel, I., & Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1982). Assortment of encounters and evolution of cooperativeness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 79, 1331–1335.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fehr, E., & Gachter, S. (2000). Cooperation and punishment. American Economic Review, 90, 980–994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., & Gachter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 145, 137–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, R. H (1988). Passions within reason: the strategic role of the emotions. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Frank, R. H (1994). Group selection and ‘genuine’ altruism. comment on “Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences” by Wilson and Sober. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17, 620–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, R. H., Gilovish, T., & Regan, D. T. (1993). The evolution of one-shot cooperation: an experiment. Ethnology and Sociobiology, 14, 247–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, D. (1996). Equilibrium in evolutionary games: some experimental results. Economic Journal, 106, (434), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fudenberg, D., & Maskin, E. (1990). Evolution and cooperation in noisy repeated games. American Economic Review, 80, 274–279.Google Scholar
Ghosh, P., & Ray, D. (1996). Cooperation in community interaction without information flows. Review of Economic Studies, 63, 491–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gunnthorsdottir, A., Houser, D., & MaCabe, K. (2001). Disposition, history and contributions in public goods experiments. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., & McElreath, R. (2001). Cooperation, reciprocity and punishment in fifteen small-scale societies. American Economic Review, 91, 73–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirshleifer, D., & Rasmussen, E. (1989). Cooperation in a repeated prisoners’ dilemma with ostracism. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 12, 87–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hosmer, D., & Lemeshow, S. (1980). A goodness-of-fit test for the multiple logistic regression model. Communications in Statistics, A10, 1043–1069.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kandori, M. (1992). Social norms and community enforcement. Review of Economic Studies, 59, 63–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keser, C., & van Winden, F. (2000). Conditional cooperation and voluntary contributions to public goods. Scandinavica Journal of Economics, 102(1), 23–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreps, D., Milgrom, P., Roberts, J., & Wilson, R. (1982). Rational cooperation in the finitely repeated PD. Journal of Economic Theory, 27, 245–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milgrom, P., North, D., & Weingast, B. (1990). The Role of institutions in the revival of trade: the law merchant, private judges, and the champagne fairs. Economics and Politics, 2, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nowak, M. A., & May, R. M. (1992). Evolutionary games and spatial chaos. Nature, 359, 826–829.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K. (1998). Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring. Nature, 393, 573–577.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Orbell, J.M., & Dawes, R. M. (1993). Social welfare, cooperators’ advantage, and the option of not playing the game. American Sociological Review, 58, 787–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Page, T., Putterman, L., & Unel, B. (2005). Voluntary association in public goods experiments: reciprocity, mimicry, and efficiency. Economic Journal, 115, 1032–1053.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, G. B. (1989). Evolutionary stability of reciprocity in a viscous lattice. Social Networks, 11, 175212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabin, M. (1993). Incorporating fairness into game theory and economics. American Economic Review, 83, 1281–1302.Google Scholar
Robson, A. J (1990). Efficiency in evolutionary games: Darwin, Nash, and the secret handshake. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 144, 379–396.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seinen, I., & Schram, A. (2000). Social status and group norms: indirect reciprocity in a repeated helping experiment. European Economic Review, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Selten, R., & Stöcker, R. (1986). End behavior in sequences of finite prisoners’ dilemma supergames. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 7, 47–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogt, C. (2000). The evolution of cooperation in Prisoners Dilemma with an endogenous learning mutant. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 42, 347–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wedekind, C., & Millinski, M. (2000). Cooperation through image scoring in humans. Science, 288, 850852.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yamagishi, T., Tanida, S., Mashima, R., Shimoma, E., & Kanazawa, S. (2003). You can judge abook by its cover: Evidence that cheaters may look different from cooperators. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 290–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, C.-L., Yue, J., & Yu, I.-T. (2004). The Rise of Cooperation in Correlated Matching Prisoners Dilemma: An Experiment, discussion paper.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Yang et al. supplementary material

Yang et al. supplementary material 1
Download Yang et al. supplementary material(File)
File 44 KB
Supplementary material: File

Yang et al. supplementary material

Yang et al. supplementary material 2
Download Yang et al. supplementary material(File)
File 521.7 KB