Exploring The Contributors To Cooperation In Single-trial Prisoner’s Dilemma

How can people avoid mutual defection and obtain mutual cooperation in prisoner’s dilemma has gained attention of scholars in different fields such as economics, finance, philosophy, sociology, psychology since the prisoner’s dilemma was created in1950s. The traditional economic theory argues that defection rather than cooperation is the dominating strategy, so people would choose to defect so long as he/she can treat the game with rationality. With the increasing studies in prisoner’s dilemma and other similar conflicting situations, however, cooperative behavior has been wildly observed in various circumstances. These findings challenge the authority of game theory and arouse researchers’ interest of what promotes cooperation.In terms of general conflicting situations, psychologists have explored numerous conditions that influence cooperation, for example the values of individualism or collectivism, the establishment and maintenance of a good reputation, situational factors and the cognitive approach to them, some personality traits, trust, sense of fairness so on so forth. When it comes to the cooperation in single-trial prisoner’s dilemma, there are two most influential explanations:(1) Reciprocity as a social norm refers to a relationship that encourages different social members/groups to treat others the same way of being treated. So, people who obey the norm of reciprocity would act cooperatively for cooperation is the only way to avoid betraying their counterpart’s "good faith".(2) The uncertainty of situation could bring about an unrational reasoning which could further produce an illusion of control. People in this illusion would convince themselves that they can exert an influence on the other’s decision, and then make a cooperative move to lead the counterpart to cooperate. Nevertheless, there are some specific questions remain unsolved such as under what condition would the two promote cooperation, could them influence cooperation simultaneously, is there an interaction between them and between their relationship with cooperation.By reviewing the previous studies, we found that the influence that norm of reciprocity exert on cooperation might not be that direct and effective for compliance with the norm only confirms the one self s will to cooperate but has nothing to do with others. Besides, although the effect of illusion of control was supported by an ingenious paradigm, the explanatory power is unquantified because it cannot be measured directly. In addition, we infer that there are theoretically two paths through which risk preference can wield its power in strategy selection. To sum up, the present research is designed to discuss the cooperation in single-trial prisoner’s dilemma on the level of attitude and behavior respectively. We also introduce risk preference as the third pillar of the framework of the present study and investigate the mechanism of how the three factors influence cooperation as well as the potential interaction. In study1, a classic market setting, duopoly pricing, was employed to exam participants’response. In study2, a real dilemma was created for multi-subject to play. They were informed ahead of time that the reward would vary as the combination of choice made by themselves and their counterpart differs. The results of two studies consistently revealed that:(1) None of the three sources has predictive effectiveness vis-a-vis cooperation in single-trial prisoner’s dilemma.(2) The norm of reciprocity functioned as a moderator in the relationship between perceived control and cooperation as well as between risk preference and cooperation.(3) To reciprocator, people who can undertake more risk are more likely to cooperate; to non-reciprocator, people who perceived a higher control are more likely to cooperate.