Abstract
How do people decide which action to take? This question is best answered using Game Theory, which has proposed a series of decision-making mechanisms that people potentially use. In network simulations, wherein games are repeated and pay-off differences can be observed, those mechanisms often rely on imitation of successful behaviour. Surprisingly, little to no evidence has been provided about whether people actually imitate more successful opponents when altering their actions in that context. By comparing two experimental treatments wherein participants play the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game in a lattice, we aim to answer whether more successful actions are imitated. While in the first treatment, participants have the possibility to use pay-off differences in making their decision, the second treatment hinders such imitation as no information about the gains is provided. If imitation of the more successful plays a role then there should be a difference in how players switch from cooperation to defection between both treatments. Although, cooperation and pay-off levels do not appear to be significantly different between both treatments, detailed analysis shows that there are behavioural differences: when confronted with a more successful co-player, the focal player will imitate her behaviour as the switching is related to the experienced pay-off inequality.
Highlights
Since the seminal work of Nowak & May [1,2], spatial structure has been proposed as a prominent mechanism to explain the presence of cooperation in social dilemmas like the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD)
Do humans imitate more successful neighbours in networks? Do pay-off differences matter in the decision to cooperate or defect? In the current work, an experiment consisting of two treatments was performed to answer these questions as an earlier experiment in a networked game did not provide support for imitation [26]
The results described in detail in the previous section show that, on a global scale there is no difference in levels of cooperation or earnings for the entire network, the knowledge of the neighbours’ payoff influences the focal player’s choice to cooperate or defect, and this in a manner that appears to be consistent with the mechanism of ‘imitation of the more successful’
Summary
Since the seminal work of Nowak & May [1,2], spatial structure has been proposed as a prominent mechanism to explain the presence of cooperation in social dilemmas like the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). This early spatial research has been integrated into the narrative of how networks influence the level of cooperation [3,4,5,6,7,8,9], gaining traction as the network reciprocity mechanism [10,11]. Notwithstanding the interesting properties of these results, they crucially depend on the assumption that imitating successful partners is the core mechanism to update players behaviour
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