This report seeks to determine whether the violation of Savage’s sure-thing principle is robust enough to survive in an original payoff domain of the prisoner’s dilemma game. It was found that the sure-thing principle was violated in the domain of gains as expected by Shafir and Tversky but obeyed in the domain of losses. It was further found that the sure-thing principle was also obeyed in the original prison sentence payoffs, which fall into the domain of losses. The findings suggest a reexamination of the application of the sure-thing principle in the prisoner’s dilemma game.
Aktipis, C.A. ( 2004). Know when to walk away: Contingent movement and the evolution of cooperation in groups. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 231(2), 249-160.
2.
Aktipis, C.A. ( 2006). Recognition memory and the evolution of cooperation: How simple strategies succeed in an agent-based world. Adaptive Behavior, 14, 239-247.
3.
Axelrod, R. ( 1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York: Basic Books.
4.
Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W.D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation . Science, 211, 1390-1396.
5.
Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. ( 2004). The evolution of strong reciprocity: Cooperation in heterogeneous populations. Theoretical Population Biology, 65, 17-28.
6.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P.J. (1988). The evolution of reciprocity in sizable groups. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 132, 337-356.
7.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P.J. (1992). Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizable groups. Ethology and Sociobiology, 13(3), 171-195.
8.
Croson, T.A. ( 1999). The disjunction effect and reason-based choice in games . Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 80, 118-133.
9.
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P.M., & the ABC Research Group. (1999 ). Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford University Press.
10.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. ( 1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263-91.
11.
Lambdin, C., & Burdsal, C. ( 2007). The disjunction effect reexamined: Relevant methodological issues and the fallacy of unspecified percentage comparisons. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103, 268-276.
12.
Li, S., & Taplin, J.E. ( 2002). Examining whether there is a disjunction effect in prisoner’s dilemma games. Chinese Journal of Psychology, 44, 25-46.
13.
Li, S., Taplin, J.E., & Zhang, Y. ( 2007). The equate-to-differentiate’s way of seeing the prisoner’s dilemma. Information Sciences, 177, 1395-1412.
14.
Li, S., & Xie, X. ( 2006). A new look at the "Asian disease" problem: A choice between the best possible outcomes or between the worst possible outcomes? Thinking &Reasoning, 12, 129-143.
15.
Lopes, L.L. ( 1987). Between hope and fear: The psychology of risk. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 20, pp. 255-295). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
16.
Luce, R.D., & Raiffa, H. ( 1957). Games and decisions: Introduction and critical survey . London: Wiley.
Nowak, M., & Sigmund, K. ( 1993). A strategy of win stay, lose shift that outperforms tit-for-tat in the prisoners-dilemma game. Nature, 364, 56-58.
19.
Panchanathan, K., & Boyd, R. ( 2003). A tale of two defectors: the importance of standing for evolution of indirect reciprocity. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 224, 115-126.
20.
Rapoport, A. ( 1964). Strategy and conscience. New York : Harper & Row.
21.
Rapoport, A., & Chammah, A.M. ( 1965). Prisoner’s dilemma. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press.
22.
Savage, L.J. ( 1954). The foundations of statistics. New York: Wiley.
23.
Shafir, E. ( 1994). Uncertainty and the difficulty of thinking through disjunctions . Cognition, 50, 403-430.
24.
Shafir, E., & Tversky, A. ( 1992). Thinking though uncertainty: Nonconsequential reasoning and choice. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 449-474.
25.
Tom, S.M., Fox, C.R., Trepel, C., & Poldrack, R.A. (2007). The neural basis of loss aversion in decision-making under risk. Science, 315(5811), 515-518.
26.
Tucker, A.W. ( 1950). A two-person dilemma, unpublished manuscript, Stanford University. (Published in 1980 as: On jargon: The prisoner’s dilemma , UMAP Journal, 1, 101).
27.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. ( 1991). Loss aversion in riskless choice: A reference-dependent model. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106, 1039-1061.
28.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. ( 1992). Advances in prospect theory: cumulative representation of uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 297-323.
29.
Tversky, A., & Shafir, E. ( 1992). The disjunction effect in choice under uncertainty. Psychological Science, 3, 305- 309.
30.
Valluri, A. ( 2006). Learning and cooperation in sequential games. Adaptive Behavior, 14, 195-209.
31.
Vanberg, V.J., & Congleton, R.D. (1992). Rationality, morality and exit. The American Political Science Review, 86(2), 418-431.