Abstract
We investigated how the contingent delivery of a cultural consequence on target culturants in an asymmetric iterated prisoner’s dilemma game (IPDG) affected players’ choices to cooperate. The asymmetric IPDG creates an analogue to environmental conditions in which behaviors and cultural practices create and sustain income disparities among different members of the population more generally. The asymmetric IPDG allows researchers to explore how these inequalities affect cooperation between players experiencing unequal payoffs. Six undergraduate students divided into three dyads participated in an ABABCDCD reversal design. An asymmetric IPDG in conditions A and C ensured that one player received a greater number of points regardless of the second participant's choices, analogous to contingencies that produce income inequalities. In conditions B and D, a metacontingency was arranged such that delivery of a cultural consequence (CC; bonus points equally distributed among the dyad) was contingent on the oscillating production of target aggregate products (APs) across two consecutive cycles. When participants coordinated responding and contacted the target AP → CC relation, the point disparity was reduced. However, individual contingencies in direct competition for the favored player were arranged to reduce the probability of cooperative responding. Results showed that the CC selected certain oscillations between target APs across dyads resulting in a decrease in the point disparity between the players. This study illustrates how laboratory scientists can arrange experiments that capture some of the complexity of social behavior as it occurs with respect to cultural, political, and economic systems and the associated networks of contingencies.
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Data availability
The data sets generated during and analyzed in the current study are available from Traci M. Cihon on reasonable request.
Notes
Researchers and clinicians working in educational settings have also been interested in cooperation, often employing “group contingencies” which are defined as “reinforcement procedures where a common consequence (i.e., reward) is contingent on the performance of one, a small number of, or all members of a group” (Page et al., 2021, p. 1; see Collins et al., 2019, for an overview). Group contingencies may be independent (the same consequence is available for each member of the group and is contingent on individual performance), dependent (the shared consequence is contingent on the performance of only some of the members of the group), or interdependent (the shared consequence is contingent on the performance of all members of the group). Group contingencies, and especially interdependent group contingencies like those employed in the good behavior game (e.g., Barrish et al., 1969), have been effective in promoting cooperative behaviors among students in classroom settings. However, there has been limited exploration of the effects of group contingencies on the cooperative behavior of adults (Page et al., 2021). Nonetheless, readers interested in strategies to promote cooperation are encouraged to review the literature related to group contingencies in addition to the research on social behavior.
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Acknowledgments
This study was conducted in partial fulfillment of Carlos R. Lopez’s master’s degree requirements at the University of North Texas. Portions of this article were presented at the annual Association for Behavior Analysis International conventions in 2020 and 2021, the Culturo-Behavior Science for a Better World conference in 2020, and the 2021 conference of the American Psychological Association, Division 25.
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Lopez, C.R., Cihon, T.M., de Borba Vasconcelos Neto, A. et al. An Exploration of Cooperation During an Asymmetric Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. Behav. Soc. Iss. 31, 106–132 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-021-00086-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-021-00086-8