Varying Patterns of Reward Cooperation

Jerry I. Shaw and Christer Thorslund
Additional contact information
Jerry I. Shaw: Department of Psychology California State University, Northridge
Christer Thorslund: Department of Psychology University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1975, vol. 19, issue 1, 108-122

Abstract: This Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) study explored the "boredom" hypothesis which explains the usual finding of high competition as the outcome of subjects' attempts to alleviate their boredom by trying to outscore one another. Forty male dyads played a 15-trial PD game in which boredom was manipulated by varying both the pattern of rewards sequentially over trials as well as by reward size, real money versus points. As expected, subjects' ratings of boredom were lowest with variable rewards and when playing for money. Cooperation was affected by variable rewards only in the points condition where boredom was highest. However, the same factors which reduced boredom significantly increased interdyad variability. The relationship between this latter finding and the validity of replicated PD games with constant rewards is discussed.

Date: 1975
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002200277501900106 (text/html)

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:sae:jocore:v:19:y:1975:i:1:p:108-122

DOI: 10.1177/002200277501900106

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().