Greed and fear in multiperson social dilemmas

Abstract

We consider greed and fear in social dilemmas, represented by multiplayer games with two strategies, cooperation and defection. The dilemmas are defined by relevant axioms. The N-person Prisoner’s Dilemma, Public Goods, Tragedy of the Commons, Volunteer’s Dilemma, and Assurance Game, are included in the considered axiomatization. For two-player interactions the scheme leads to three types of social dilemmas, the PD (and the Weak PD), the Chicken and the Stag Hunt game. We define greed and fear for multiplayer social dilemmas, and observe that all the dilemmas have greed or fear build in.