The effect of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on cooperation in social conflict situations: the case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

Cooperation in our ever changing and growing societies is vital. However, conflict cannot be avoided when it comes to change and growth. I used the repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game to investigate the impact of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on cooperation in conflict. Four behavioural studies were conducted with 282 participants, playing the game within different social and environmental contexts. Findings from these studies suggest that cooperation in PDG depends on the extrinsic variables of social and environmental contexts, the intrinsic variables of individual differences, and the history of recent interactions. In the fifth study, I ran a meta-analysis using Linear Mixed Effect analysis to examine the effect of each of the above factors across the studies accounting for both mixed and random effects. Finding from the meta-analysis highlights strong dependency of cooperation on participants previous choices, the social and the environmental contexts and gender. Importantly, the environmental context and age and the partner’s behaviour and attachment style showed to interactively affect cooperation in the repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. Across all studies, cooperation shown to be a function of most recent interactions, social and environmental factors, and individuals dispositions. Therefore, when studying cooperation in conflict, studying one or two variables in isolation without considering the full dynamic of the situation is an incomplete investigation