Chapter 11 More on Social Dilemmas Summary and Analysis

Although Prisoner's Dilemmas and, to a lesser extent, Chicken get most of the attention, there are many other kinds of two-person non-cooperative games. In two-person games that are symmetric, that is, where no player has an advantage, there are four separate payoff situations and hence four separate games: Deadlock, Prisoner's Dilemma. Chicken, and Stag Hunt. Each of these games has its own unique properties and strategies.

Deadlock is similar to Prisoner's Dilemma, except that in Deadlock there is no reason to cooperate. Unlike Prisoner's Dilemma, there is no advantage to cooperation unless the other player cooperates and, hence, defection is the only reasonable strategy. Stag Hunt is probably the most interesting of the symmetric dilemmas. Also known as an "assurance game", Stag Hunts exist when there are large mutual gains from mutual cooperation...