How to Encourage Cooperation

Political Scientist Robert Axelrod

asked game theory experts to submit computer programs designed to prevail in game providing rewards either for refusing to cooperate or for cooperating when the programs encountered other programs

TIT FOR TAT

1 st encounter with any program, Tit for Tat cooperates 2d encounter: Tit for Tat did what the other program did on previous encounter

Tit for Tat never gets repeatedly victimized & never gets locked into mutually costly chains of mutual betrayal

Simple conditional cooperation is more infectious than unmitigated meanness

if tit for tat had been tossed into the game with 49 steadfast non-cooperators, there would have been a 49-way tie for first place Robert Wright, The Moral Animal

Most of Tit for Tat’s neighbors were designed to cooperate under at least some circumstances

We are designed to cooperate under at least some circumstances

When volunteers playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game cooperated with one another, the “reward circuits” of their brains were activated, the same regions that are activated when certain drugs are taken or when good fortune befalls us Emory University Professor Gregory Berns .

How Do You Play Tit for Tat? Cooperate Retaliate for Betrayal Forgive Return to Cooperation