Cooperation, Social Dilemmas and Game Theory

Introduction

Many social connections are still competitive if humans are perfectly capable of cooperating and if ethics, social justice, and other characteristics of humans encourage cooperation. It is possible to assume that the character of the social condition had more to do with competition than with the individuals (Barreda-Tarrazona et al., 2018). In other words, competition is frequently a result of a social dilemma, which breeds behaviors that reward selfishness even when people try to do the right thing (Arefin et al., 2020). The development and use of common public goods can put individuals from a group, culture, or civilization at odds with one another, creating social issues (Honjo and Kubo, 2020). Whether or not they individually contributed to the construction of the commodities, public goods are advantages shared by society, and every group member has access to them. A resource that, if utilized intelligently by the group, will stay intact but, if misused, will be destroyed is frequently involved in the public good.

Main body

Two players must determine whether to collaborate or defect in a prisoner’s dilemma. Each of them possesses a motivation to defect, although their return is greater if they both work together. This game is intriguing because, while mutual secession is the sole logical move when performed only once, cooperation emerges as a Nash equilibrium when played repeatedly over an extended period. Due to this, both in the social and biological sciences, investigating the formation of cooperation has come to rely heavily on the repeating version of a prisoner’s dilemma across time.

Whenever a social dilemma frequently performed, there is always a sort of conflict of interest since one person is inclined to collaborate less than another to enjoy a bigger portion of the benefits of cooperation. This outcome was not unexpected. One of the most well-known findings in game theory, known as the folk theorem, demonstrates that various equilibria appear when a game like a prisoner’s dilemma is played with a long enough time horizon. In most of them, one participant wins more money than the other. Independent of the opponent’s strategy, the repeating prisoner’s dilemma contains a class of tactics called extortionate strategies, which guarantee themselves a reward that is never lower than the other players. The extortionate strategies are invincible in this regard. This conclusion is especially fascinating because extortionate strategies are a straightforward memory-one strategy that relies only on their current choice based on the previous round’s results.

As a symmetric game, the prisoner’s dilemma makes asymmetric results hard to defend. When two extortionate strategies are pitted against one another, there is no extortion since they both get the reciprocal payment for defection. Extortionate strategies cannot become dominant inside a single population since they can only thrive when they encounter techniques that are not extortionate strategies. Second, strategies are hard to calculate in a typical prisoner’s dilemma, which helps to explain why researchers have not paid much attention to them in the past. Since it is doubtful that constrained rational players will stumble onto them by trial and error, this problem is especially pertinent for experimental environments where human behavior is monitored. Several studies have examined how people respond to extortionate strategies by seeing how they interact with machines designed to use such tactics. What is known as to whether humans can find them is far less certain. Extortionate strategies are only visible when the player who outperforms the opponent receives an additional incentive. The authors concluded that extortionate strategies only succeed when increased competition is rewarded with more profit. The question is whether extortionate strategies may be a component of a Nash equilibrium when players must use memory-one tactics. Suppose the answer to this question is no. In that case, extortionate strategies are likely to have a limited impact on evolutionary theories, even in asymmetrical, multi-population scenarios, and may be more challenging to see in experiments.

These factors imply that extortionate strategies are much more likely to be involved in theoretical models and clinical investigations when a prisoner’s dilemma is not present, at least in these three ways. We should look for asymmetric situations where one participant is better positioned to demand a higher reward. Second, these games must include extortionate strategies that are simple to understand and reasonably simple to find. Finally, a Nash equilibrium must include these extortionate strategies. Player 2 makes his choice in this game without knowing what Player 1 has decided. Similar to the prisoner’s dilemma, in-game, players can select between Cooperation (C) and Defection (D), with cooperation yielding better rewards than mutual defection (D’Arcangelo et al. 2021). D is a (weakly) dominating strategy for Player 2 in the game is one, pure strategy Nash equilibrium, which both players pick (D’Arcangelo et al. 2021). In contrast to the prisoner’s dilemma, D is not Player 1’s go-to tactic because C is the strongest counter to D (D’Arcangelo et al. 2021).

There is frequently a disagreement of interests between the actors when a social issue is repeated through time. Due to the symmetric nature of the game and the existence of a symmetrical, cooperative equilibrium, which serves as the players’ clear focal point, the typical repeated prisoner’s dilemma minimizes the significance of this conflict. It is simpler to show that there are other equilibrium candidates in asymmetric games like the game we looked at in this work. The fact that Player 1 gets the largest payout possible in this equilibrium while Player 2 may seek a bigger payoff is one clear explanation. Player 2 offers Player 1 a proposal on splitting the rewards of cooperation by selecting a probability of cooperation. Depending on the level of cooperation Player 2 provides to Player 1, offers range in fairness.

If Player 2 collaborates with a sufficiently high probability, Player 1 can reject any offer by defecting even though doing so is expensive. Contrarily, in the ultimatum game, a non-negligible minority of participants often reject any lower offer than an equal split. The modal decision for Player 2 in both Mixture treatments was to cooperate to extract a higher payment. In contrast, in the ultimatum game, it is typical to discover that equal division is the modal option among the proposers.

Conclusion

When given the opportunity, human subjects attempt to extract a higher reward. S participants attempt to achieve this outcome, although there is an equilibrium in which extortion is possible. This finding is significant because it advances knowledge of how players’ reputations and repetition help to resolve societal problems. Players’ impatience, poor coordination, or lack of knowledge are frequently blamed for cooperative equilibrium failures in games with imperfect surveillance. When people attempt to get a bigger portion of the rewards of collaboration, conflict develops, leading to a breakdown in cooperation. Although this subject has not gotten much attention thus far, it will undoubtedly get more in the future.

Reference List

Arefin, M., Kabir, K. M., Jusup, M., Ito, H., and Tanimoto, J. (2020) ‘Social efficiency deficit decipher social dilemmas’, Scientific reports 10(1), 1-9. Web.

Barreda-Tarrazona, I., García-Gallego, A., Georgantzis, N., and Ziros, N. (2018) ‘Market games as social dilemmas’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 155, 435-444. Web.

D’Arcangelo, C., Andreozzi, L., and Faillo, M. (2021) ‘Human players manage to extort more than the cooperation payoff in repeated social dilemmas’, Scientific Reports, 11(1), 1-12. Web.

Honjo, K., and Kubo, T. (2020) ‘Social dilemmas in nature-based tourism depend on social value orientations’, Scientific Reports, 10(1), 1-10. Web.

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StudyCorgi. 2024. "Cooperation, Social Dilemmas and Game Theory." April 17, 2024. https://studycorgi.com/cooperation-social-dilemmas-and-game-theory/.

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