Determinants of Successful Cooperation in a Face-to-Face Social Dilemma

Silvia Grätz and Donja Darai ()

VfS Annual Conference 2011 (Frankfurt, Main): The Order of the World Economy - Lessons from the Crisis from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: What makes you a successful cooperator? Using data from the British television game show ``Golden Balls'' we analyze a prisoner's dilemma game and its pre-play. We find that players strategically select their partner for the PD, e.g., they bear in mind whether contestants lied. Players' expectations about the stake size strongly influence the outcome of the PD: The lower the stakes, the more likely players successfully cooperate. Most interestingly, unilateral cooperation is encouraged by mutually promising not to defect and shaking hands on it, but a mere handshake serves as manipulating device and increases successful defection.

JEL-codes: C72 C93 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/48702/1/VfS_2011_pid_96.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Determinants of Successful Cooperation in a Face-to-Face Social Dilemma (2010)
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:zbw:vfsc11:48702

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2011 (Frankfurt, Main): The Order of the World Economy - Lessons from the Crisis from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().