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Playing a Dominated Strategy: The Prisoner’s Dilemma

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mwalker/10_GameTheory/RepeatedPrisonersDilemma.pdf

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a classic game theory problem where two player’s are given a choice between cooperation and non-cooperation. In the game both player’s choose one of the two options at the same time without knowing the choice of the other. Due to the set up of the matrix for this game it can be shown that cooperation is strictly domianted by non-cooperation and thus a rational player would never choose cooperation. Thus game has many applications to the real-world even among countries, examples being the revent U.S. China Trade War and Cold War. But what it there were a way to tweak the game and get both sides to choose cooperation? Enter the repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma.

As stated in the above paper, the key to getting both players to cooperate is have them play the game more than once and ensure that they know the game will be played again with the same player. This allows for the devlopement of more complex strategies and the notion of reputation. Both players are inclined to build a good reputation through cooperation so that future games can result in cooperation too. Futhurmore, the notion of punishment also arises with a repeated game, in whihc one player can punish the other for defecting in a past game by not cooperating in the future. Ultimately, repeated games allow for players to justify choosing what seems like a strictly worse strategy and may be the answer to solving instances of the Prisoner’s Dilemma that occur on a world stage.

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