Prisoner’s Dilemma in Different Age Groups
During a few of the lectures in this class, we learned about game theory. One of the most well-known games in game theory is the prisoner’s dilemma. The prisoner’s dilemma occurs when two individuals (players) that have to decide whether to cooperate or not cooperate both act in their own interest, resulting in a worse outcome for both players. For example, let’s say that there are two individuals that committed a crime together. Both of their jail sentences will depend on whether each one chooses to cooperate with the police–in other words, tell the police that the other player took part in committing the crime. A player will receive a shorter time sentence if they betray the other player, or act in their own interest. But if they both cooperate and betray one another, they will both receive sentences longer than they would if each were to cooperate while the other stayed silent. And if they both stay silent, they will both still receive jail time but the total jail time will be minimized. Prisoner’s dilemma has been discussed in other classes that I’ve taken and I’ve always wondered what makes a player ultimately decide if they are going to betray the other player or not.
One thing that I never thought about was the ages of the players. While searching online for a source relating to prisoner’s dilemma, I found a research study published by Kansas State University that looked into the effects of age on cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma game. The two groups being compared in this study were elderly people and college students. At the beginning of the study, they hypothesized that the elderly people would cooperate more and that the college students would cooperate less, or “cheat” as the study said. I thought the same as well. I think I believed that elderly people would cooperate more because elderly people are usually seen as being nicer and more compassionate compared to younger people. I didn’t think that they would cheat on a game more compared to young college students. However, the results showed that it was actually the other way around. The researchers found that the elderly people cheated (betrayed the other player) more than the college students, which I wasn’t expecting. I found this study really interesting because I had never thought of age affecting cooperation choices prior to reading it and now I wonder what other factors affect this kind of decision making in games.