How Suspicion Grows: Effects of Population Size on Cooperation

Abstract

We study the interaction between individuals in a population, where each individual encounters one another at random intervals, and in each encounter the two individuals play one round of the game of prisoner s dilemma. By discounting future reward, and allowing for imperfect memory and mobility of the individuals, we study the evolutionary equilibrium strategy to identify situations where cooperation emerges. We find that cooperation among individuals typically emerges when future reward becomes more important, when individuals in the population have better memory, and when the individuals move in and out of the population less frequently. The findings help explain social loafing and free rider commonly seen in towns, corporations, and military units.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2014
Accession Number
ADA620482

Entities

People

  • Ittai Bar-ilan

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Case Studies
  • Cooperation
  • Demography
  • Equations
  • Game Theory
  • Literature Surveys
  • Mathematical Models
  • Mobility
  • Models
  • Natural Resources
  • Numerical Analysis
  • Operations Research
  • Probability
  • Random Variables
  • Standards
  • Steady State
  • Zero-Sum Games

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Economics
  • Game Theory.