Premium
The effect of an initial cooperative or competitive treatment upon a subject's response to conditional cooperation
Author(s) -
Sermat Vello
Publication year - 1967
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830120405
Subject(s) - dilemma , psychology , prisoner's dilemma , social psychology , subject (documents) , chemistry , developmental psychology , computer science , mathematics , geometry , library science
Subjects, 112 male and 112 female college students, participated in four experiments with mixed‐motive games, using a Prisoner's Dilemma and a Chicken matrix. A prearranged program simulating the “other player” made 30 consecutive cooperative or competitive choices during a “pretreatment” and then, for 200 trials, reciprocated the S's choices with a one‐trial lag (the tit‐for‐tat treatment). A highly significant increase in cooperative behavior was observed in all four experiments. The data suggest that either type of pretreatment may facilitate the development of a cooperative strategy, if followed by a tit‐for‐tat treatment, while in the absence of pretreatment, no increase in cooperative behavior was found. The sex of S and the effect of the first move of tit‐for‐tat treatinent interacted with other experimental conditions. Cooperative pretreatment, followed by a cooperative first move, produced one of the highest levels of cooperation observed in these experiments.