Power Asymmetries and Punishment in a Prisoner's Dilemma with Variable Cooperative Investment.

ABSTRACT: In many two-player games, players that invest in punishment finish with lower payoffs than those who abstain from punishing. These results question the effectiveness of punishment at promoting cooperation, especially when retaliation is possible. It has been suggested that these findings may stem from the unrealistic assumption that all players are equal in terms of power. However, a previous empirical study which incorporated power asymmetries into an iterated prisoner's dilemma (IPD) game failed to show that power asymmetries stabilize cooperation when punishment is possible. Instead, players cooperated in response to their partner cooperating, and punishment did not yield any additional increase in tendency to cooperate. Nevertheless, this previous study only allowed an all-or-nothing-r

SUBMITTER: Bone JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4871419 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature