Resilient cooperators stabilize long-run cooperation in the finitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma.

ABSTRACT: Learning in finitely repeated games of cooperation remains poorly understood in part because their dynamics play out over a timescale exceeding that of traditional lab experiments. Here, we report results of a virtual lab experiment in which 94 subjects play up to 400 ten-round games of Prisoner's Dilemma over the course of twenty consecutive weekdays. Consistent with previous work, the typical round of first defection moves earlier for several days; however, this unravelling process stabilizes after roughly one week. Analysing individual strategies, we find that approximately 40% of players behave as resilient cooperators who avoid unravelling even at significant cost to themselves. Finally, using a standard learning model we predict that a sufficiently large minority of resilient coopera

SUBMITTER: Mao A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5241863 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature