Risk and Temptation: A Meta-Study on Social Dilemma Games

Mengel, Friederike

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2519997

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…23 Other statistics have also been found to correlate with cooperation rates in finitely repeated PDs, as in Mengel (2014b). Murnighan & Roth (1983) also discuss ten indexes that can be applied to these games.…”

Section: The Standard Perspective In the Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma

2015

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More than half a century after the first experiment on the finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma, evidence on whether cooperation decreases with experience-as suggested by backward induction-remains inconclusive. This paper provides a metaanalysis of prior experimental research and reports the results of a new experiment to elucidate how cooperation varies with the environment in this canonical game. We describe forces that affect initial play (formation of cooperation) and unraveling (breakdown of cooperation). First, contrary to the backward induction prediction, the parameters of the repeated game have a significant effect on initial cooperation. We identify how these parameters impact the value of cooperation-as captured by the size of the basin of attraction of Always Defect-to account for an important part of this effect. Second, despite these initial differences, the evolution of behavior is consistent with the unraveling logic of backward induction for all parameter combinations. Importantly, despite the seemingly contradictory results across studies, this paper establishes a systematic pattern of behavior: subjects converge to use threshold strategies that conditionally cooperate until a threshold round; and conditional on establishing cooperation, the first defection round moves earlier with experience. Simulation results generated from a learning model estimated at the subject level provide insights into the long-term dynamics and the forces that slow down the unraveling of cooperation.

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Section: The Standard Perspective In the Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma

2015

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“…Our work is inspired by an impressive meta-study of 96 laboratory experiments concerned only with the PD class, where Mengel (2018) identifies three key descriptors for predicting behavior in PDs: temptation, risk and efficiency. These three features take values in [0, 1] and prove very useful to predict the dynamics of cooperation rates when agents face a stream of identical PD games.…”

Section: Categorization Of Similar Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We test the descriptive and predictive power of FWC dynamics against laboratory evidence collected by others. We selected all the 26 PD treatments in Mengel (2018) and other 19 SH treatments from the experimental literature that fulfill three criteria: (a) the stage game has positive payoffs; (b) the stage game is played over multiple rounds; (c) players are paired using the random matching protocol. See Table SM.1 for a full list of the selected games.…”

Section: Identical Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The previous section offers a qualitative comparison between FWC and three other learning algorithms over PD and SH. This is based on the extensive empirical evidence collected in Mengel (2018) for PD, and assembled by us for SH.…”

Section: Fwc Play Over Other Game Classesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We maintain the assumptions that the payoffs are positive, not all identical, and that the payoffs along the main diagonal are The class of 3 × 3 games is more complex. There is no comprehensive study that pinpoints a small subset of key descriptors, as Mengel (2018) does for PD games. And it is very likely that different people may pay attention to different features, or that they may use different categorizations.…”

Section: A Foray Beyond 2 × 2 Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Feature-weighted categorized play across symmetric games

LiCalzi

Mühlenbernd

2022

Exp Econ

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Experimental game theory studies the behavior of agents who face a stream of one-shot games as a form of learning. Most literature focuses on a single recurring identical game. This paper embeds single-game learning in a broader perspective, where learning can take place across similar games. We posit that agents categorize games into a few classes and tend to play the same action within a class. The agent’s categories are generated by combining game features (payoffs) and individual motives. An individual categorization is experience-based, and may change over time. We demonstrate our approach by testing a robust (parameter-free) model over a large body of independent experimental evidence over $$2 \times 2$$ 2 × 2 symmetric games. The model provides a very good fit across games, performing remarkably better than standard learning models.

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Cooperating over losses and competing over gains: A social dilemma experiment

Ispano

Schwardmann

2017

Games and Economic Behavior

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Evidence from studies in international relations, the politics of reform, collective action and price competition suggests that economic agents in social dilemma situations cooperate more to avoid losses than in the pursuit of gains. To test whether the prospect of losses can induce cooperation, we let experimental subjects play the traveler's dilemma in the gain and loss domain. Subjects cooperate substantially more over losses. Our experimental design allows us to show that this treatment effect is best explained by reference-dependent risk preferences and referencedependent strategic sophistication. We discuss policy implications and relate our findings to other experimental games played in the loss domain.

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Risk and Temptation: A Meta-Study on Social Dilemma Games

Cited by 4 publications

References 49 publications

Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma

Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma

Feature-weighted categorized play across symmetric games

Cooperating over losses and competing over gains: A social dilemma experiment

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