High mutual cooperation rates in rats learning reciprocal altruism: The role of payoff matrix.

ABSTRACT: Cooperation is one of the most studied paradigms for the understanding of social interactions. Reciprocal altruism -a special type of cooperation that is taught by means of the iterated prisoner dilemma game (iPD)- has been shown to emerge in different species with different success rates. When playing iPD against a reciprocal opponent, the larger theoretical long-term reward is delivered when both players cooperate mutually. In this work, we trained rats in iPD against an opponent playing a Tit for Tat strategy, using a payoff matrix with positive and negative reinforcements, that is food and timeout respectively. We showed for the first time, that experimental rats were able to learn reciprocal altruism with a high average cooperation rate, where the most probable state was mutual cooper

SUBMITTER: Delmas GE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6314613 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature