Mixing rules: When to cooperate in the multiple team context
Authors
Published
Simulation Modeling Practice and Theory, vol.
14, issue
4, pp.
423-437,
May
2006
Abstract
In the study of social dilemmas, there has been a strong divide between empirical studies of how people behave and
simulation experiments focusing on how people ought to behave. This study bridges that gap by deducing rules-in-use
by participants in a human experiment in a multiple-team social dilemma. It then uses a computer simulation to evaluate
which of the identified rules-in-use generates the best performance. The results suggest that participants use either a Win-
Stay/Lose-Revert strategy or a Win-Cooperate/Lose-Defect strategy. While a mean-Win-Stay/Lose-Revert strategy dominates
most often, the Win-Cooperate/Lose-Defect strategy performs better in a two-team than in a single-team setting.
