scholarly journals Aggression, fast and slow: Intuition also favors defensive aggression

Author(s):  
Jim Albert Charlton Everett ◽  
Zachary Ingbretsen ◽  
Fiery Andrews Cushman ◽  
Mina Cikara

In certain threatening social encounters, humans seem to act distrustfully, uncooperatively, even aggressively by default, and must reason themselves towards comity and moderation. Yet, the contemporary scientific literature mostly supports the opposite view, according to which we are “intuitively prosocial”: acting cooperatively by default in positive-sum interactions in games such as the Prisoner’s dilemma. Could a change in the nature of the game elicit a different profile of default behavior? Across four studies we investigate whether intuition might also favor defensive aggression. We develop a “pre-emptive strike game” in which two players make a series of decisions about whether to live-and-let-live, or instead pay a small cost to imposing a large cost on the other player, knocking them out of the game. In this setting we find that default aggression prevails. Moreover, this aggressive tendency can be overridden when playing the game against in-group members, but tends not to be when playing against out-group members. In short, when faced with a social partner who may choose to harm them, people default towards defensive aggression.

1984 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 687-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick M. Gardner ◽  
Terry L. Corbin ◽  
Janelle S. Beltramo ◽  
Gary S. Nickell

Cooperation in pairs of rats playing the prisoner's dilemma game was investigated. Six pairs of animals were taught to make either cooperative or uncooperative responses by running to one or the other end of a T-maze. Two T-mazes were joined together such that animals could respond simultaneously. Animals were run under conditions in which visual communication was present and absent. Mutually uncooperative responses were the most common and mutually cooperative behaviors the least preferred. Introduction of a barrier between the mazes, which removed visual communication between pairs, sharply accentuated uncooperative behavior. Similarities of the present findings to results with human subjects and the implications of using game theory for studying cooperative behavior in animals are discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 371-408
Author(s):  
Valerio Capraro ◽  
Joseph Y Halpern

In the past few decades, numerous experiments have shown that humans do not always behave so as to maximize their material payoff. Cooperative behavior when noncooperation is a dominant strategy (with respect to the material payoffs) is particularly puzzling. Here we propose a novel approach to explain cooperation, assuming what Halpern and Pass call translucent players. Typically, players are assumed to be opaque, in the sense that a deviation by one player in a normal-form game does not affect the strategies used by other players. However, a player may believe that if he switches from one strategy to another, the fact that he chooses to switch may be visible to the other players. For example, if he chooses to defect in Prisoner’s Dilemma, the other player may sense his guilt. We show that by assuming translucent players, we can recover many of the regularities observed in human behavior in well-studied games such as Prisoner’s Dilemma, Traveler’s Dilemma, Bertrand Competition, and the Public Goods game. The approach can also be extended to take into account a player’s concerns that his social group (or God) may observe his actions. This extension helps explain prosocial behavior in situations in which previous models of social behavior fail to make correct predictions (e.g. conflict situations and situations where there is a trade-off between equity and efficiency).


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 3-30
Author(s):  
Tommi Lehtonen ◽  

The prisoner's dilemma famously shows that individuals seeking their own benefit end up with a worse outcome than could be achieved through cooperation. This dilemma provides an effective but neglected method for the study of the Hindu principle of "desireless action" (niṣkāmakarma). In the context of the prisoner's dilemma, one or the other of the following decision-making strategies is feasible for prisoners who want to follow the principle of "desireless action": (1) to be indifferent and to leave the decision to chance (e.g. by arbitrarily drawing lots) or (2) to pursue the common good or the benefit of the other (by remaining silent) instead of seeking primarily to benefit oneself (by confessing). The second strategy is more appropriate assuming the following: the followers of the principle of "desireless action" can be goal-oriented and target-driven, as long as unselfish goals are considered, while remaining indifferent and non-attached in terms of personal benefit. This interpretation is tested and further discussed in this article in light of the values of the modem environmental and anti-consumerist degrowth movement. A non-profit orientation and the emphasis on duties are shared by the concepts of degrowth and niṣkāmakarma. Social- or reality-centredness rather than self-centredness is also common to both concepts. The degrowth movement focuses on economic contraction and deceleration, and thus its scope is narrower and more specific than that of niṣkāmakarma. Moreover, the degrowth movement rejects economic grovrth because of its ecologically and socially harmful effects, such as pollution and income inequality, but it is - at least in theory - indifferent to the harmless results of economic activities. On the contrary, the principle of niṣkāmakarma involves a critical stance toward both good and bad results of actions, insofar as they are pursued because of self-regarding desires.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toko Kiyonari

We examined if naive observers can distinguish defectors from cooperators even when defectors may be motivated to present themselves positively. In Study 1, 150 participants played a “semi-sequential” Prisoner’s Dilemma Game (PDG) with real monetary incentives, half as first players and half as second players. First players decided to cooperate or defect, and second players made the same decision without knowing the first player’s choice. The first player was given a chance to present a video message to the second player before the latter made their decision. After the PDG, players played a separate one-shot, semi-sequential Stag Hunt Game (SHG), a coordination game where cooperation is the best choice insofar as the other also cooperates. In this game, the first player was not given a chance to send a video message. When the players had incentives to hide intentions or manipulate impressions of themselves, even motivated judges (whose monetary gain depended on the accuracy of cheater/cooperator detection) could not distinguish defectors from cooperators in either the PDG or SHG. However, they were able to discriminate “hard-core defectors” who defected in both games. In Study 2, however, in which judges had no monetary incentives to detect targets’ choices, participants were unable to discern even hard-core defectors. The contents of the messages did not provide help discerning defectors.


1972 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 821-822
Author(s):  
Knud S. Larsen

43 female Ss and 46 male Ss played three Prisoner's Dilemma games. The three games were 100% cooperative, 100% competitive, and 50% random cooperative. The other independent variable was attributed power. The results showed that neither type of game nor attributed power had an effect on game behavior. Small but significant correlations were, however, found between attributed power and type of game when analyzed separately for males and females. Men high on attributed power are more cooperative in an invariable cooperative game whereas high-scoring women are more competitive in an invariable competitive game.


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.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhaoyang Cheng ◽  
Guanpu Chen ◽  
Yiguang Hong

Abstract Zero-determinant (ZD) strategies have attracted wide attention in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD) games, since the player equipped with ZD strategies can unilaterally enforce the two players’ expected utilities subjected to a linear relation. On the other hand, uncertainties, which may be caused by misperception, occur in IPD inevitably in practical circumstances. To better understand the situation, we consider the influence of misperception on ZD strategies in IPD, where the two players, player X and player Y , have different cognitions, but player X detects the misperception and it is believed to make ZD strategies by player Y. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the ZD strategies in IPD with misperception, where there is also a linear relationship between players’ utilities in player X’s cognition. Then we explore bounds of players’ expected utility deviation from a linear relationship in player X’s cognition with also improving its own utility.


2021 ◽  
Vol 94 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tetsushi Ohdaira

Abstract In the previous studies, the author proposes the payoff-difference-based probabilistic peer-punishment that the probability of punishing a defector increases as the difference of payoff between a player and a defector increases and shows that the proposed peer-punishment effectively increases the number of cooperators and the average payoff of all players. On the other hand, reward as well as punishment is considered to be a mechanism promoting cooperation, and many studies have discussed the effect of reward in the public goods game, a multiplayer version of the prisoner’s dilemma game. Based on the discussion of those existing studies, this study introduces the payoff-difference-based probabilistic reward that the probability of rewarding a cooperator increases as the difference of payoff between a player and a cooperator increases. The author utilizes the framework of the spatial prisoner’s dilemma game of the previous study and shows that the reward of this study realizes the evolution of cooperation except some cases. Graphic abstract


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasileios Mantas ◽  
Artemios Pehlivanidis ◽  
Vasileia Kotoula ◽  
Katerina Papanikolaou ◽  
Georgia Vassiliou ◽  
...  

Prisoner’s dilemma (PD) is one of the most popular concepts among scientific literature. The task is used in order to study different social interactions by giving participants the choice of defection or cooperation in a specific social setting/dilemma. This review concerns the technical characteristics of PD use in medical literature involving human subjects and how the different settings could influence the behaviours studied by the task. We identify all studies that have used PD in medical research with human participants and distinguish, following a heuristic approach, the seven parameters that can differentiate a PD task, namely a.Opponent parties’ composition; b.Opponent perceived type; c.Interaction flow; d.Number of rounds; e.Instructions, narration and options; f.Strategy and g.Reward matrix and payoffs. For each parameter, we highlight their variability as it is captured in the literature, and we describe how each one could influence the final outcome of the PD task. Our aim is to point out the heterogeneity of such methods in the past literature and to assist future researchers into methodology design.


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