Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

In a study by Pruitt (1967) two-person decomposed prisoner's dilemma games (DPDs) were constructed from a 2 X 2 prisoner's dilemma game. Pruitt showed that some DPDs evoked greater cooperation than others, despite the fact that the payoffs were identical in all of the games. Pruitt's findings were interpreted in terms of Hamburger's (1973) "take-some" and "give-some" games, and it was hypothesized that DPDs in which the cooperative choice rewards the other members of the group would evoke greater cooperation than DPDs in which the competitive choice punishes the other members. This hypothesis was tested with three-person DPDs with college students as subjects. The results support the hypothesis and several explanations of the findings are discussed.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Brewer, M. B. , & Kramer, R. M. (1986). Choice behavior in social dilemmas: Effects of social identity, group size, and decision framing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 543-549.

Dawes, R. M. (1980). Social dilemmas. Annual Review of Psychology, 31, 169-193.

Dawes, R. M. , McTavish, J. , & Shaklee, H. (1977). Behavior, communication, and assumptions about other people's behavior in a commons dilemma situation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 1-11.

Hamburger, H. (1973). N-person prisoner's dilemmas. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 3, 27-48.

Hamburger, H. , Guyer, M. , & Fox, J. (1975). Group size and cooperation. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 19, 503-531.

Kelley, H. H. , & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal relations. New York: John Wiley.

Komorita, S. S. , & Barth, J. M. (1985). Components of reward in social dilemmas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 364-373.

Messick, D. M. , & Brewer, M. B. (1983). Solving social dilemmas: A review. In L. Wheeler & P. Shaver (Eds.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 4). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Messick, D. M. , & McClintock, C. G. (1968). Motivational bases of choice in experimental games. Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, 4, 1-25.

10.

Pruitt, D. G. (1967). Reward structure and cooperation: The decomposed prisoner's dilemma game. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7, 21-27.

11.

Pruitt, D. G. (1970). Motivational processes in the decomposed prisoner's dilemma game. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14, 227-238.

12.

Rapoport, A. (1967). Optimal policies for the Prisoner's Dilemma. Psychological Review, 74, 136-148.

13.

Schwartz-Shea, P. , & Simmons, R. T. (1986). The rhetoric of cooperation. Unpublished manuscript, Utah State University, Logan.

14.

Thibaut, J. W. , & Kelley, H. H. (1959). The social psychology of groups. New York: John Wiley.

15.

Tversky, A. , & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the rationality of choice. Science, 211, 543-558.

Cooperative Choice in Decomposed Social Dilemmas

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References