HISTORY EFFECTS IN SOCIAL DILEMMA SITUATIONS

Thomas Gautschi

Rationality and Society, 2000, vol. 12, issue 2, 131-162

Abstract: It is well known that the `shadow of the future' affects behavior in social dilemma situations such as the Prisoner's Dilemma or the Trust Game (e.g. Axelrod 1984). How past experience, stemming from interactions with other subjects (`history' or `shadow of the past'), is influencing a subject's current behavior in social dilemma situations is less well known. In this article, we distinguish between situations with and without such a history. The simple theory we lay out here predicts no effects of the past on current behavior in dilemma situations. However, we present experimental evidence on behavior in social dilemma situations that is in conflict with this theory, revealing that history effects do indeed influence a subject's behavior. Two main elaborations of the theory are suggested which stem from the past of these dilemma situations, namely, additional and more complex utility arguments and additional and more complex information structures. We discuss how these arguments can be taken into account, leading to a more accurate analysis of behavior in social dilemma situations.

Keywords: experimental game theory; history effects; reciprocity; social dilemma situations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/104346300012002001 (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:ratsoc:v:12:y:2000:i:2:p:131-162

DOI: 10.1177/104346300012002001

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Rationality and Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().