Prisoners Dilemma By Albert Tucker

Abstract This experiment involves a social dilemma, where participants had to choose whether or not to betray their partner. In 1950, while researching game theory, Flood & Dresher devised a model, that Albert Tucker later interpreted and named the Prisoners Dilemma. The participant receives a high reward of they betray their partner and their partner does not betray them, a medium reward if they and their partner both don’t betray each other, and no reward if they both betray each other. In Tuckers version, the participant was told they were in a prison, and the reward was years off their sentence. In this version, the participants were told the same story, but the reward was candy. The research hypothesis is that participants will not work together, even if they will gain more if they do.
The experiment uses an independent measures design. The participants were chosen through opportunity sampling, and were a mix of adolescent males and females. The results of the experiment did not support the research hypothesis, as half the participants worked together, and half did not.

Introduction In 1950, Merrill M. Flood and Melvin Dresher of the RAND corporation invented a fascinating game, designed to test the theory that two rational individuals may not work together, even if it would be in both of their best interests to do so. Flood and Dresher, both mathematicians, were both very interested in how people dealt with circumstances involving conflict. Later that year, Albert Tucker, another mathematician, interpreted and gave a name to the game; the Prisoners Dilemma. Tucker’s Prisoners Dilemma made Flood & Dresher’s game theory much more accessible.
In it he described a scenario where two people who are part of a criminal gang are caught and are imprisoned. They are both put in solitary confinement, with no way of contacting each other. Then they are given a choice. Stay silent, or betray your friend. If one betrays the other, but the other stays silent then the betrayer will go free, and the other will spend 20 years in prison (there are varying accounts in how much time the punishments are). If neither one betrays the other they will only remain in prison for a couple months . If they both betray each other, they will both be put in jail for 15 years. Neither one of the prisoners has any knowledge of how the other has answered. It is in the self interest of each of them to betray their partner. However, when each person pursues their own self interest, both of them end up in a worse situation. There have been many replications of this study, each with varying results. Theoreticians and scientist today are still interested in the Prisoners Dilemma today, because they believe that it can be utilized as a model for real world
situations.