Cooperation in the Decomposed Prisoner's Dilemma Game

Abstract

The question of whether the changes in cooperative behavior resulting from decomposing a standard Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game matrix are due to information revealed by the decomposition or information that is concealed by the decomposition is considered. Two experiments were conducted in which subjects were shown either a standard PD matrix along with one of its decomposed derivatives or a decomposed matrix by itself. The results suggest that the effect on cooperation produced by decomposing a PD matrix is due to the revealing of information that is not readily grasped from the standard matrix presentation format.