An Experimental Study of Within- and Cross-cultural Cooperation: Chinese and American Play in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

Michael Kuroda (), Jieran Li (), Jason Shachat, Lijia Wei and Bochen Zhu ()
Additional contact information
Michael Kuroda: Economic Science Institute, Chapman University
Jieran Li: Economic Science Institute, Chapman University
Bochen Zhu: Wuhan University

Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute

Abstract: We study whether cross- and within-culture groups have different cooperation rates in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. In an experiment, university students in China and America engage in a single iteration of the game, complete belief elicitation tasks regarding their opponents’ play and take a survey including attitudinal measurements regarding their in- and out-group attitudes. Cooperation rates are higher across the two countries are higher in both cross-culture and in within-culture interactions, although not significantly. We also find that Chinese participants cooperate less than American ones. Further, female Chinese participants are more cooperative than Chinese male ones. In the cross-culture treatment, Chinese participants underestimate the likelihood of cooperative behavior of their American counterparts, while Americans overestimate the same likelihood of their Chinese counterparts. Our results also show that Chinese participants cooperate more conditionally than American ones. Finally, while we find some attitudinal in- and out-biases both they do not generate meaningful impact on cooperative behavior.

Keywords: Cross-culture; Prisoner’s Dilemma; Cooperation; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cna, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/351/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chu:wpaper:21-14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Megan Luetje ().