Criminal Defectors Lead to the Emergence of Cooperation in an Experimental, Adversarial Game

Maria R D'Orsogna, Ryan Kendall, Michael McBride () and Martin B Short

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 4, 1-9

Abstract: While the evolution of cooperation has been widely studied, little attention has been devoted to adversarial settings wherein one actor can directly harm another. Recent theoretical work addresses this issue, introducing an adversarial game in which the emergence of cooperation is heavily reliant on the presence of “Informants,” actors who defect at first-order by harming others, but who cooperate at second-order by punishing other defectors. We experimentally study this adversarial environment in the laboratory with human subjects to test whether Informants are indeed critical for the emergence of cooperation. We find in these experiments that, even more so than predicted by theory, Informants are crucial for the emergence and sustenance of a high cooperation state. A key lesson is that successfully reaching and maintaining a low defection society may require the cultivation of criminals who will also aid in the punishment of others.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0061458 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 61458&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0061458

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061458

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().