Locey Matthew L, Rachlin Howard
Stony Brook University.
J Behav Decis Mak. 2012 Jul 1;25(3):257-263. doi: 10.1002/bdm.729. Epub 2011 Jan 24.
Parties in real-world conflicts often attempt to punish each other's behavior. If this strategy fails to produce mutual cooperation, they may increase punishment magnitude. The present experiment investigated whether delay-reduction - potentially less harmful than magnitude increase - would generate mutual cooperation as interactions are repeated. Participants played a prisoner's dilemma game against a computer that played a tit-for-tat strategy, cooperating after a participant cooperated, defecting after a participant defected. For half of the participants, the delay between their choice and the computer's next choice was long relative to the delay between the computer's choice and their next choice. For the other half, long and short delays were reversed. The tit-for-tat contingency reinforces the other player's cooperation (by cooperating) and punishes the other player's defection (by defecting). Both rewards and punishers are discounted by delay. Consistent with delay discounting, participants cooperated more when the delay between their choice and the computer's cooperation (reward) or defection (punishment) was relatively short. These results suggest that, in real-world tit-for-tat conflicts, decreasing delay of reciprocation or retaliation may foster mutual cooperation as effectively as (or more effectively than) the more usual tactic of increasing magnitude of reciprocation or retaliation.
现实世界冲突中的各方常常试图惩罚对方的行为。如果这种策略未能促成相互合作，他们可能会加大惩罚力度。本实验研究了延迟减少——可能比加大惩罚力度危害更小——在互动重复进行时是否会产生相互合作。参与者与一台采用针锋相对策略的计算机进行囚徒困境游戏，即参与者合作后计算机也合作，参与者背叛后计算机也背叛。对于一半的参与者，他们做出选择与计算机做出下一个选择之间的延迟，相对于计算机做出选择与他们做出下一个选择之间的延迟来说较长。对于另一半参与者，长延迟和短延迟的情况则相反。针锋相对的应变策略通过合作强化对方的合作行为，并通过背叛惩罚对方的背叛行为。奖励和惩罚都会因延迟而打折扣。与延迟折扣一致的是，当参与者做出选择与计算机做出合作（奖励）或背叛（惩罚）之间的延迟相对较短时，参与者的合作更多。这些结果表明，在现实世界的针锋相对冲突中，减少回应或报复的延迟可能与增加回应或报复的力度这一更为常见的策略一样有效地（或更有效地）促进相互合作。
