Individual characteristics and behavior in repeated games: an experimental study

Abstract

Using a laboratory experiment, we investigate whether a variety of behaviors in repeated games are related to an array of individual characteristics that are popular in economics: risk attitude, time preference, trust, trustworthiness, altruism, strategic skills in one-shot matrix games, compliance with first-order stochastic dominance, ability to plan ahead, and gender. We do find some systematic relationships. A subject's patience, gender, altruism, and compliance with first-order stochastic dominance have some limited systematic effects on her behavior in repeated games. At the level of a pair of subjects who are playing a repeated game, each subject's patience, gender, and ability to choose an available dominant strategy in a one-shot matrix game systematically affect the frequency of the cooperate-cooperate outcome. However, overall, the number of systematic relationships is surprisingly small.

Cooperation, Discounting, and the Effects of Delayed Costs and Benefits

“…As expected, when the costs and benefits of cooperation are realized at the same time, we find no signifi- cant correlation between an individual's degree of impatience and her contribution behavior, neither in NowNow (Spearman's rank correlation: ρ = 0.04, p = 0.746) nor in LaterLater (ρ = −0.11, p = 0.400). This indicates that there is no direct link between cooperativeness and (im)patience per se, which is in line with previous evidence (Fehr and Leibbrandt, 2011;Davis et al, 2016). Time preferences matter, however, in our two asymmetric treatments.…”

“…Apart from the Prisoner's Dilemma game, they further study the effects of delayed payments on Stag-Hunt game choices, as well as bidding behavior in a first and second price auction. Furthermore, Deck and Jahedi (2015b) study behavior in an intertemporal contest game, but find little evidence for any time discounting.4 Two further related papers areFehr and Leibbrandt (2011) andDavis et al (2016). Both studies separately measure individuals' time preferences and cooperation behavior in a static social dilemma game without any delayed payments.…”

On the Determinants of Cooperation in Infinitely Repeated Games: A Survey

“…does not find a robust relationship between survey responses to question regarding risk attitudes and cooperation. Similarly, Proto et al [2014] and Davis et al [2014] do not find a relationship between risk aversion and cooperation. It is not clear why these three papers found that risk aversion does not correlate with cooperation while Sabater-Grande and Georgantzis [2002] finds that it does.…”

“…The literature has also not found a robust relationship between gender and cooperation in infinitely repeated games. While some papers find that women tend to cooperate less in some treatments, other papers do not find such a relationship (see Murnighan and Roth [1983], , Sherstyuk et al [2013], Davis et al [2014] and Proto et al [2014]).…”

Experimental Methods for the General Economist: Five Lessons from the Lab

“…While I am of course well aware of the bundle of differences in both biology and socialization that distinguish males and females, I was skeptical that these differences could meaningfully affect the way people played simple games. My conversion came fairly recently in a project regarding behavior in indefinitely repeated prisoner dilemma games (Davis, Ivanov, and Korenok ). It is well known that in such games subjects exhibit considerable heterogeneity in their propensities to cooperate and we were interested in identifying individual characteristics that affected cooperative propensities.…”