Strategies of "real" opponents in eliciting cooperative choice in a Prisoner's Dilemma game

Abstract

Early work by Scodel et al. (1959) and in our laboratory has revealed that, contrary to expectancy (Luce and Raiffa, 1957), iteration of a two-person, two-choice Prisoner's Dilemma game in which choice was simultaneous for both persons resulted in growing competition rather than ultimate cooperation. That, iteration would produce a cooperative resolution, is logical and fitting, out of consideration both for maximum gain and for cordial social regard. Rapoport and his followers (see Rapoport and Chammah, 1965) have since found that a prolonged iterative seriesmuch longer than that previously employed by other researchers-recapitulated the general growth of competition up to about 100 iterations, but thereafter, subject pairs tend to segregate into hawks (those who continued in mutual competition), doves (those who achieve fairly complete mutual cooperation), or mugwumps (those who move away from