Once Nice, Always Nice? Results on Factors Influencing Nice Behavior from an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Experiment

Jürgen Fleiß and Ulrike Leopold‐Wildburger

Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2014, vol. 31, issue 2, 327-334

Abstract: The reliability of human behavior in situations where cooperation is beneficial for all but is hindered by individual incentives not to cooperate is a central research question in economics and the social sciences. Little is known about how the interaction results of a subject with one partner may affect this subject's behavior when subsequently matched with a new partner. We extend this knowledge by studying the development of cooperation in a repeated prisoner's dilemma experiment. After several rounds, each subject is matched with a new partner. We analyse whether the interaction outcomes with the first partner lead subjects to change their behavior when they interact with the second partner. We focus on niceness as introduced by Axelrod and find statistically significant effects. Mutual cooperation with the first partner is positively correlated with the continuation of a nice strategy, whereas mutual defection leads subjects to give up their nice strategy. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2194

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:bla:srbeha:v:31:y:2014:i:2:p:327-334

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1092-7026

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Systems Research and Behavioral Science from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().