IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v85y1991i02p515-528_17.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A “Cognitive Miser” Theory of Cooperators Advantage

Author

Listed:
  • Orbell, John
  • Dawes, Robyn M.

Abstract

We propose a new model of cooperators' advantage depending neither on supplementary incentives nor on cooperators' capacity to recognize, and play selectively with, other cooperators. It depends, rather, on players' making the play-no play decision by the heuristic of projecting their own “cooperate-defect” choices onto potential partners. Cooperators offer to play more often, and fellow cooperators will more often accept their offer. When certain boundary conditions are met, this results in a higher expected payoff for cooperators than for defectors. Empirical support for this heuristic is suggested by expectations data from related social dilemma experiments. Moreover, its use can be justified in Bayesean terms. Our model brings behavioral decision theory's “cognitive miser” paradigm to bear on interdisciplinary concern with the evolution of cooperative behavior and shows how, if other mechanisms provide a suitable “initial kick,” cooperation can evolve in the absence of iteration and in large, mobile societies.

Suggested Citation

  • Orbell, John & Dawes, Robyn M., 1991. "A “Cognitive Miser” Theory of Cooperators Advantage," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 85(2), pages 515-528, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:85:y:1991:i:02:p:515-528_17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400178700/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Ermisch & Diego Gambetta & Heather Laurie & Thomas Siedler & S. C. Noah Uhrig, 2009. "Measuring people's trust," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 172(4), pages 749-769, October.
    2. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Alexandros Karakostas, 2020. "An experimental investigation of the ‘tenuous trade-off’ between risk and incentives in organizations," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 88(1), pages 153-190, February.
    3. Florian Heine & Martin Sefton, 2018. "To Tender or Not to Tender? Deliberate and Exogenous Sunk Costs in a Public Good Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-28, June.
    4. Feng, Sinan & Liu, Xuesong & Dong, Yida, 2022. "Limited punishment pool may promote cooperation in the public goods game," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 165(P2).
    5. Pradeep, Siddhartha, 2019. "Game theory, Strategies and the convoluted triangle - India, Pakistan, Kashmir," EconStor Preprints 195929, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    6. Jordan Mansell, 2020. "Causation and Behavior: The Necessity and Benefits of Incorporating Evolutionary Thinking into Political Science," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1677-1698, September.
    7. Elinor Ostrom, 2010. "Analyzing collective action," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(s1), pages 155-166, November.
    8. Teck-Hua Ho & Keith Weigelt, 2005. "Trust Building Among Strangers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(4), pages 519-530, April.
    9. Nosenzo, Daniele & Tufano, Fabio, 2017. "The effect of voluntary participation on cooperation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 307-319.
    10. Bicchieri, Cristina & Maras, Marta, 2022. "Intentionality matters for third-party punishment but not compensation in trust games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 205-220.
    11. Esther Hauk & Rosemarie Nagel, 2001. "Choice of Partners in Multiple Two-Person Prisoner's Dilemma Games," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 45(6), pages 770-793, December.
    12. Robert Neumann, 2016. "Understanding trustworthiness: using response latencies from CATI surveys to learn about the “crucial” variable in trust research," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 43-64, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:85:y:1991:i:02:p:515-528_17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.