intro.psych (Psyco 105) Discussion

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Prisoner's Dilemma

intro.psych (Psyco 105) Discussion: Group 3 Discussion Group: Social Influences on Behaviour: Sites to Visit: Prisoner's Dilemma

By Patricia on Wednesday, October 14, 1998 - 03:12 pm:

This is an on-line version of the Prisoner's Dilemma game. Try out several different strategies and see how you score. Which strategy produced the best return? How does your response affect the outcome?
Go There
Back to Social Influences on Behaviour Sites to Visit

By Jene on Friday, October 23, 1998 - 12:54 pm:

I had a hard time figuring this site out so my response to this question is limited. It seems that the more I cooperated, with minimal cheating, the better my score. If I only cheated, I won the game, but I came out with a low score.

By Montresor on Friday, October 23, 1998 - 01:48 pm:

Serendip (the computer) uses a tit-for-tat strategy. This strategy is hard to compete against and doubly so since we don't know ahead of time how many trials there are going to be.

It's interesting that they keep track of the average number of coins - it adds a new dimension to the game. If I was to cheat all the time, sure I would be 5 ahead all the time, but my average number of coins would decrease. If I were to cooperate all the time the computer and I would have the exact same score in coins and average as the computer.

The best strategy would be to cooperate all the time and then to cheat the last time. You would then land up 5 ahead and your average would increase as well. BUT because you don't know ahead of time how many trials there will be, you can't wait until the last trial.

I tried to discover a system that the computer uses to determine how many trials there will be, but I think that it is completely random because even if you cooperate all the time the number of trials ranged between 9-18 for the number of times that I tried.

By Admin on Friday, October 23, 1998 - 01:54 pm:

Howdy!

I like the added twist of not knowing when the game stops - it is more like real life. Some days we can get the last word in, but other days we can't...

Connie

By Montresor on Friday, October 23, 1998 - 02:03 pm:

Therefore the "best" strategy would depend on whether you want a high average or not. There is no way to get more than 5 above the computer, so the only way to "win" would be to cheat all the time.

I tried to cooperate all the time and the computer stopped it at 10 I went back and chose cheat rather than cooperate and the game continued. I did this a second time and the computer stopped the game. So when I cheated IN the game as well as AT the game I received the highest score!!!! J

PS- The formatting is pretty cool!!!

By Mollyc on Saturday, October 24, 1998 - 01:18 pm:

I have a hard time making a concrete statement about this site, I tried all strategies and all them came to similiar number. I will try again .

Who's summarizing this week?

By Montresor on Monday, October 26, 1998 - 12:46 pm:

I will summarize!!