ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the game-theory findings of Axelrod and more recent successors, including Martin Nowak, C. Daniel Batson and Nadia Ahmad and Johan Almenberg and Anna Dreber— and looks at the pioneering pre-Axelrod work of evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers. Game theory helps prove that cooperation is not merely aspirational; it is an inherent human instinct, increasingly developed through natural selection operating in both the biological and cultural spheres. Evolutionary biologists, economists, political scientists, psychologists and others have turned to game theory in general and the Prisoner’s Dilemma in particular to study the “social dilemma” of “how cooperation can emerge among egoists without central authority”. Games such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma consist of three elements: Players, possible actions, and prescribed payoffs or punishments. “The theoretical predictions of game theory are based on the assumption that individuals choose actions in order to maximize their own utility”.
