James P. Gahagan

The effects of conflict intensity and promisor credibility on a target’s behavior

Noncontingent promises of varying credibility were made to Ss in conditions of high and low conflict intensity established by manipulating the payoff values in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game (PDG) payoff matrix. Highly credible promises produced more cooperation on the message trials than did low credibility promises. Ss concealed their choice intentions more when credibility was low. Greater overall cooperation, trust, and repentence were displayed when the conflict intensity was low. Conflict intensity interacted with credibility on the proportion of forgiveness shown. Females were more repentent than males when promise conditions were compared to controls.

Start effect and response bias in the prisoner's dilemma game

In a Prisoner’s Dilemma Game it was found that location of response switch did not bias the strategy selections of Ss. No DD outcome occurred for any pair of Ss on the first trial, but initial trial CC outcomes were followed by more cooperations than were initial trial CD outcomes. Females displayed more “trust” than did males.

The ethical shift in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game1,2

Twenty three-man groups made of ROTC cadets were compared with 20 individuals when playing against a “dummy” strategy of 50% cooperation over 50 trials of the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. The 20 triads were further divided into two conditions: one with 10 equal status triads, the other with 10 triads comprised of unit commanders with two of their principal subordinates. Results showed groups to be less “trustworthy” than individuals; this was interpreted to be an “ethical shift.” There were no significant differences between triad types.

Discrimination of outcomes in a prisoner’s dilemma game

An experiment was conducted to demonstrate that previous research using the PDG has neglected to separate the effects of strategy from the types of outcomes associated with two-person two-choice games, i.e.; whether it be a two-outcome, three-outcome, or standard four-outcome game. The types of outcomes and the contingent strategies of a “dummy” were manipulated. Two strategies were used in the standard PDG four-outcome game, four strategies were varied in the three-outcome game, and one strategy was used in a two-outcome game. Seventy Ss, 10 under each strategy level, were run. A significant difference between the two-outcome game and the three- and four-outcome games on cooperation proportion over 100 iterations of the game was found. No differences were found between strategies within types. It was concluded that experimentation utilizing “dummy” strategy manipulations must not be of such a nature as to confound types of outcomes with the strategy levels. Also, a S’s game behavior does not seem to be sensitive to strategy differences of the “other” player when cooperations over all trials is the dependent variable.