The Evolution of Cooperation

Abstract

R obert Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation is destined to find its way into hundreds of scholarly footnotes over the next decade. It is, quite simply, a book that will be widely read and discussed within the academic circles of many fields. There is a reason for this. It is a book that in simple and straightforward language addresses a major and long-standing question that, it so happens, is peripherally related to a long list of interesting topics. The question, as Axelrod notes, is "Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?" A few of the peripherally related topics include: trench warfare in World War I, biological systems, the golden rule, nuclear warfare, government's raison d'etre, family feuds, stereotyping, economic protectionism, congressional politics, morality, taxes, and international cooperation. The sum around which the book revolves is the game strategic prisoner's dilemma. Prisoner's dilemma, as Axelrod tells us, "is simply an abstract formulation of some very common and interesting situations in which what is best for each person individually leads to mutual defection, whereas everyone would have been better off with mutual cooperation." The recognition of which has predictably led many persons to ask, "So, what is the solution?" Axelrod, armed with the computer tournament results of prisoner's dilemma experts, answers that in iterated prisoner's dilemma games it is Tit for Tat: the behavioral response that seeks to do to others (good or bad) what others have done to you. A little background is necessary. Axelrod asked persons who had written on prisoner's dilemma (persons in the fields of biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, physics, political science, psychology, and sociology) to submit a computer program they thought would obtain the most points when pitted against other computer programs within the prisoner's dilemma setting. The winner was Tit for Tat, submitted by Anatol Rapoport.