ABSTRACT
Throughout the period from the early 1950s to the middle 1970s, experimental gaming research centred chiefly on two-person mixed-motive games, especially the Prisoner’s Dilemma game. It is not difficult to account for the attraction of experimental researchers to these games. Apart from the factors underlying the appeal of experimental games in general (see section 5.1), Prisoner’s Dilemma and related games provide simple methods for investigating interesting and important aspects of strategic interaction, such as cooperation and competition, trust and suspicion, and individualism and collectivism, that are difficult or impossible to study by other means.
