scholarly journals Wealth-relative effects in cooperation games

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Shuler

AbstractThis paper investigates conditions under which game agents benefit from considering wealth relative to decision payoff, presents simulation analysis of these effects, and explains why they often do not show up but it is realistic that they should. We extend the known categories of games reported to exhibit wealth relative effects (chicken games) to many others (including Prisoner’s Dilemma) while clarifying that the poor must avoid survival risk, regardless of whether this is associated with cooperation or defection. A simulation of iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma with wealth accumulation and a survival threshold (which we call the Farmer’s Game) is used to evaluate tit-for-tat and four variants, including Subsist, Thief, Exploit and Middle (even lower risk than Subsist). Equilibrium payoffs are used to keep the game scaled to social relevance, with a fraction of all payoffs externalized as a turn cost parameter. Findings include poor performance of tit-for-tat near the survival threshold, superior performance of Subsist and Middle for both poor and wealthy players, dependence of survival of the poor near the threshold on tit-for-tat forgiveness, unexpected optimization of forgiveness without encountering a social dilemma, improved performance of a diverse mix of strategies, and a more abrupt threshold of social catastrophe for the better performing mix. Additionally we find that experimental results which appear to be at odds with conventional findings of cooperation vs. network size can be reconciled with theory and simulation via wealth-relative weighting, which opens the door to practical application of cooperation theory.Significance StatementEnabling comparison of theoretical and simulated game cooperation theory results to controlled experiments with live subjects and in-situ data from field surveys will enable application of scientifically verified results to societal and policy problems, and will generate new and unexpected insights through clearer interpretation of data. Extension of wealth-relative effects to a broader range of games also allows analysis of real life situations with greater confidence.

1995 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 322-322
Author(s):  
Brian Betz

120 subjects played a six-choice Prisoner's Dilemma game in which a simulated other employed either GRIT or GRIT/Tit-For-Tat with varying levels of communication. Analysis indicated that the addition of Tit-For-Tat to GRIT offers no advantages over the standard GRIT strategy.


2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 318-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Sanabria ◽  
Howard Rachlin ◽  
Forest Baker

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-174
Author(s):  
Jurica Hižak

When Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma takes place on a two-dimensional plane among mobile agents, the course of the game slightly differs from that one in a well-mixed population. In this paper we present a detailed derivation of the expected number of encounters required for Tit-for-tat strategy to get even with Always-Defect strategy in a Brownian-like population. It will be shown that in such an environment Tit-for-Tat can perform better than in a well-mixed population.


2013 ◽  
Vol 280 (1766) ◽  
pp. 20131475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indrikis Krams ◽  
Hanna Kokko ◽  
Jolanta Vrublevska ◽  
Mikus Āboliņš-Ābols ◽  
Tatjana Krama ◽  
...  

Reciprocal altruism describes a situation in which an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, but there is an ultimate fitness benefit based on an expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time. It creates the obvious dilemma in which there is always a short-term benefit to cheating, therefore cooperating individuals must avoid being exploited by non-cooperating cheaters. This is achieved by following various decision rules, usually variants of the tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy. The strength of TFT, however, is also its weakness—mistakes in implementation or interpretation of moves, or the inability to cooperate, lead to a permanent breakdown in cooperation. We show that pied flycatchers ( Ficedula hypoleuca ) use a TFT with an embedded ‘excuse principle’ to forgive the neighbours that were perceived as unable to cooperate during mobbing of predators. The excuse principle dramatically increases the stability of TFT-like behavioural strategies within the Prisoner's Dilemma game.


Games ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shun Kurokawa ◽  
Joe Yuichiro Wakano ◽  
Yasuo Ihara

Evolution of cooperation by reciprocity has been studied using two-player and n-player repeated prisoner’s dilemma games. An interesting feature specific to the n-player case is that players can vary in generosity, or how many defections they tolerate in a given round of a repeated game. Reciprocators are quicker to detect defectors to withdraw further cooperation when less generous, and better at maintaining a long-term cooperation in the presence of rare defectors when more generous. A previous analysis on a stochastic evolutionary model of the n-player repeated prisoner’s dilemma has shown that the fixation probability of a single reciprocator in a population of defectors can be maximized for a moderate level of generosity. However, the analysis is limited in that it considers only tit-for-tat-type reciprocators within the conventional linear payoff assumption. Here we extend the previous study by removing these limitations and show that, if the games are repeated sufficiently many times, considering non-tit-for-tat type strategies does not alter the previous results, while the introduction of non-linear payoffs sometimes does. In particular, under certain conditions, the fixation probability is maximized for a “paradoxical” strategy, which cooperates in the presence of fewer cooperating opponents than in other situations in which it defects.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 434-453
Author(s):  
Shoko Kitano ◽  
Tetsuo Yamaguchi ◽  
Daisuke Saeki ◽  
Masato Ito

Cooperative behavior in nonhuman animals has been studied within the framework of game theory, typically by using the prisoner’s dilemma game. Previous studies on cooperation by pigeons using this game have revealed that, under these conditions, the animals did not learn the tit-for-tat strategy played by their opponents. In many cases, animals fail to choose cooperation and in so doing do not maximize their gains. The present experiment examined pigeons’ cooperative choices in the prisoner’s dilemma game situation by using a different type of apparatus than that used in previous studies: Subjects moved to choose one of two feeding sites, one of which was shared by another, stooge, pigeon whose choices were controlled by a computer and the other of which was not shared by other pigeons. In this choice situation, the presence of the stooge pigeon increased the subjects’ choices of the shared feeding site significantly. Further, the pigeons learned the other player’s choice strategy (tit-for-tat and random), showing that choice proportions for the shared feeding site were significantly higher in the tit-for-tat condition than in the random condition. These results suggest that the presence of a conspecific at the feeding site is a reinforcer for choosing it and that the choice situation constituted by the apparatus used in the present experiment could promote learning of the opponent’s choice strategy.


2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernd Lahno

AbstractIn contrast to Axelrod’s advice “don’t be envious” it is argued that the emotion of envy may enhance cooperation. TIT FOR TAT does exhibit a certain degree of envy. But, it does so in inconsistent ways. Two variants of TIT FOR TAT are introduced and their strategic properties are analyzed. Both generate the very same actual play as TIT FOR TAT in a computer tournament without noise. However, if noise is introduced they display some greater degree of stability. This is due to the fact that they form, in a prisoner’s dilemma supergame with suitable parameters, an equilibrium with themselves that is subgame perfect or (in case of the first strategy) close to subgame perfect. It is additionally argued that these strategies are exceptionally clear and comprehensible to others in that they conform to well known real live behavior patterns.


2000 ◽  
Vol 11 (08) ◽  
pp. 1539-1544 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. AHMED ◽  
A. S. ELGAZZAR

Prisoner's Dilemma games with two and three strategies are studied. The corresponding replicator equations, their steady states and their asymptotic stability are discussed. Local Prisoner's Dilemma games are studied using Pareto optimality. As in the case with Nash updating rule, the existence of tit for tat strategy is crucial to imply cooperation even in one dimension. Pareto updating implies less erratic behavior since the steady state configurations are mostly fixed points or at most 2-cycle. Finally, Prisoner's Dilemma game is simulated on small-world networks which are closer to real systems than regular lattices. There are no significant changes compared to the results of the regular lattice.


Author(s):  
Michael Harré

Iterated games, in which the same economic interaction is repeatedly played between the same agents, are an important framework for understanding the effectiveness of strategic choices over time. To date very little work has applied information theory to the information sets used by agents in order to decide what action to take next in such strategic situations. This article looks at the mutual information between previous game states and an agent's next action by introducing two new classes of games: ’invertible games’ and ‘cyclical games'. By explicitly expanding out the mutual information between past states and the next action we show under what circumstances these expressions can be simplified. These information measures are then applied to the Traveler's Dilemma game and the Prisoner's Dilemma game, the Prisoner's Dilemma being invertible, to illustrate their use. In the Prisoner's Dilemma a novel connection is made between the computational principles of logic gates and both the structure of games and the agents' decision strategies. This approach is applied to the cyclical game Matching Pennies to analyse the foundations of a behavioural ambiguity between two well studied strategies: ‘Tit-for-Tat' and ’Win-Stay, Lose-Switch'.


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