Abstract
The Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma with Intragroup Power Dynamics (IPD^2) is a new game paradigm for studying human behavior in conflict situations. IPD^2 adds the concept of intragroup power to an intergroup version of the standard Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma game. We conducted a laboratory study in which individual human participants played the game against computer strategies of various complexities. The results show that participants tend to cooperate more when they have greater power status within their groups. IPD^2 yields increasing levels of mutual cooperation and decreasing levels of mutual defection, in contrast to a variant of Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma without intragroup power dynamics where mutual cooperation and mutual defection are equally likely. We developed a cognitive model of human decision making in this game inspired by the Instance-Based Learning Theory (IBLT) and implemented within the ACT-R cognitive architecture. This model was run in place of a human participant using the same paradigm as the human study. The results from the model show a pattern of behavior similar to that of human data. We conclude with a discussion of the ways in which the IPD^2 paradigm can be applied to studying human behavior in conflict situations. In particular, we present the current study as a possible contribution to corroborating the conjecture that democracy reduces the risk of wars.
Highlights
Erev and Roth have argued for the necessity of a Cognitive Game Theory that focuses on players’thought processes and develops simple general models that can be appropriately adapted to specific circumstances, as opposed to building or estimating specific models for each game of interest [1]
Our main contribution is three-fold: (1) We present a new game paradigm, IPD^2, that can be used to represent complex decision making situations in which intragroup power dynamics interact with intergroup competition or cooperation; (2) We put forth a computational cognitive model that aims to explain and predict how humans make decisions and learn in this game; and (3) We describe a laboratory study aimed at exploring the range of behaviors that individual human participants exhibit when they play the game against computer strategies of various complexities
We developed a cognitive model of human behavior in IPD^2 to understand and explain the dynamics of power in two-level interactions
Summary
Erev and Roth have argued for the necessity of a Cognitive Game Theory that focuses on players’. We introduce intragroup power to an Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma game as a determinant of each actor’s ability to maximize long-term payoffs through between-group cooperation or competition. Our main contribution is three-fold: (1) We present a new game paradigm, IPD^2, that can be used to represent complex decision making situations in which intragroup power dynamics interact with intergroup competition or cooperation; (2) We put forth a computational cognitive model that aims to explain and predict how humans make decisions and learn in this game; and (3) We describe a laboratory study aimed at exploring the range of behaviors that individual human participants exhibit when they play the game against computer strategies of various complexities. This is the cognitive architecture we used to build the current model for IPD^2
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
