IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0030902.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Rationality of Prejudices

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Chadefaux
  • Dirk Helbing

Abstract

We model an -player repeated prisoner's dilemma in which players are given traits (e.g., height, age, wealth) which, we assume, affect their behavior. The relationship between traits and behavior is unknown to other players. We then analyze the performance of “prejudiced” strategies—strategies that draw inferences based on the observation of some or all of these traits, and extrapolate the inferred behavior to other carriers of these traits. Such prejudiced strategies have the advantage of learning rapidly, and hence of being well adapted to rapidly changing conditions that might result, for example, from high migration or birth rates. We find that they perform remarkably well, and even systematically outperform both Tit-For-Tat and ALLD when the population changes rapidly.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Chadefaux & Dirk Helbing, 2012. "The Rationality of Prejudices," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(2), pages 1-6, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0030902
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0030902
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0030902
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0030902&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0030902?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Chadefaux & Dirk Helbing, 2010. "How Wealth Accumulation Can Promote Cooperation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(10), pages 1-7, October.
    2. Francisco C. Santos & Marta D. Santos & Jorge M. Pacheco, 2008. "Social diversity promotes the emergence of cooperation in public goods games," Nature, Nature, vol. 454(7201), pages 213-216, July.
    3. Anne Case & Christina Paxson, 2008. "Stature and Status: Height, Ability, and Labor Market Outcomes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(3), pages 499-532, June.
    4. Jonathan Bendor & Roderick M. Kramer & Suzanne Stout, 1991. "When in Doubt..," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(4), pages 691-719, December.
    5. repec:pri:indrel:case_paxson_stature_status_8312006.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:pri:cheawb:case_paxson_stature_status_8312006.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    7. repec:pri:cheawb:case_paxson_stature_status_8312006 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. repec:pri:indrel:case_paxson_stature_status_8312006 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Li, Jing & Wang, Jiang, 2018. "Locality based wealth rule favors cooperation in costly public goods games," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 1-7.
    2. Chen, Yunong & Belmonte, Andrew & Griffin, Christopher, 2021. "Imitation of success leads to cost of living mediated fairness in the Ultimatum Game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 583(C).
    3. Evans, Alecia & Sesmero, Juan, 2022. "Cooperation in Social Dilemmas with Correlated Noisy Payoffs: Theory and Experimental Evidence," 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Austin, Texas 322804, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. John Komlos, 2009. "Recent Trends in Height by Gender and Ethnicity in the US in Relation to Levels of Income," NBER Working Papers 14635, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Wang, Xiaofeng & Chen, Xiaojie & Gao, Jia & Wang, Long, 2013. "Reputation-based mutual selection rule promotes cooperation in spatial threshold public goods games," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 181-187.
    6. Elisabetta De Cao, 2015. "The Height Production Function from Birth to Age Two," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(3), pages 329-363.
    7. Wang, Chengjiang & Wang, Li & Wang, Juan & Sun, Shiwen & Xia, Chengyi, 2017. "Inferring the reputation enhances the cooperation in the public goods game on interdependent lattices," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 293(C), pages 18-29.
    8. Tao, Hung-Lin, 2014. "Height, weight, and entry earnings of female graduates in Taiwan," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 85-98.
    9. Christian Hilbe & Moshe Hoffman & Martin A. Nowak, 2015. "Cooperate without Looking in a Non-Repeated Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-15, September.
    10. von Hinke Kessler Scholder S, 2009. "Genetic Markers as Instrumental Variables: An Application to Child Fat Mass and Academic Achievement," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 09/25, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    11. Marco Tomassini & Alberto Antonioni, 2019. "Computational Behavioral Models for Public Goods Games on Social Networks," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, September.
    12. Konno, Tomohiko, 2013. "An imperfect competition on scale-free networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(21), pages 5453-5460.
    13. Michele Belloni & Claudia Villosio, 2014. "Training and wages of older workers in Europe," Working Papers 2014:27, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    14. Janet Currie & Joshua Graff Zivin & Katherine Meckel & Matthew Neidell & Wolfram Schlenker, 2013. "Something in the water: contaminated drinking water and infant health," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(3), pages 791-810, August.
    15. Ciccarelli, Carlo & De Fraja, Gianni & Vuri, Daniela, 2021. "Effects of passive smoking on prenatal and infant development: Lessons from the past," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    16. Te Wu & Feng Fu & Long Wang, 2011. "Moving Away from Nasty Encounters Enhances Cooperation in Ecological Prisoner's Dilemma Game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(11), pages 1-7, November.
    17. Ahsan, Md Nazmul & Maharaj, Riddhi, 2018. "Parental human capital and child health at birth in India," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 130-149.
    18. Stojkoski, Viktor & Karbevski, Marko & Utkovski, Zoran & Basnarkov, Lasko & Kocarev, Ljupco, 2021. "Evolution of cooperation in networked heterogeneous fluctuating environments," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 572(C).
    19. Zhang, Jianlei & Zhang, Chunyan & Chu, Tianguang, 2011. "The evolution of cooperation in spatial groups," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 131-136.
    20. Petter Lundborg & Carl Hampus Lyttkens & Paul Nystedt, 2016. "The Effect of Schooling on Mortality: New Evidence From 50,000 Swedish Twins," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(4), pages 1135-1168, August.

    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:plo:pone00:0030902. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.