ABSTRACT
This chapter presents theory and research on a special case of a social dilemma called the prisoner’s dilemma. With the prisoner’s dilemma game, however, hundreds of studies have been conducted, and the results of these studies clearly do not support the principle. Structural goal/expectation theory assumes that some type of coercion is needed to facilitate cooperation, especially in large groups, and the reward structure of the social dilemma must be changed. As an extension of J. W. Thibaut and H. H. Kelley’s exchange theory, Kelley and Thibaut proposed an important distinction between two types of outcome matrices: the “given matrix” and the “effective matrix.” The tit-for-tat strategy, submitted by Anatol Rapoport, was found to be most effective, as measured by the total score playing against all of the other entries. R. Axelrod states that cooperation is very difficult to develop in the Prisoner’s dilemma if it is not played repeatedly.
