Emergence and suppression of cooperation by action visibility in transparent games
Fig 2
Payoff matrices for Prisoner’s Dilemma and (Anti-)Coordination Game.
(A) In Prisoner’s Dilemma, players adopt roles of prisoners suspected of committing a crime and kept in isolated rooms. Due to lack of evidence, prosecutors offer each prisoner an option to minimize the punishment by making a confession. A prisoner can select one of the two actions (A1 or A2): either betray the other by defecting (D), or cooperate (C) with the partner by remaining silent. The maximal charge is five years in prison, and the payoff matrix represents the number of years deducted from it (for instance, if both players cooperate (CC, upper left), each gets a two-year sentence, because three years of prison time have been deducted). The letters R,T,S and P denote payoff values and stand for Reward, Temptation, Saint and Punishment, respectively. (B) In the (Anti-)Coordination Game variant known as Bach-or-Stravinsky and as Hero [27–29]) two people are choosing between Bach and Stravinsky music concerts. Player 1 prefers Bach, Player 2—Stravinsky, hence, there is an inherent conflict about which concert to choose; yet, above all both prefer going to the concert together. Thus the aim of the players is to coordinate (either on Bach or on Stravinsky), which assures maximal joint reward for the players. Players can either insist (I) on their own preference or accommodate (A) the preference of the partner. In these terms, the outcome coordination (attending the same concert) is achieved by selecting complementary actions: either (I, A) or (A, I), which justifies the name: “anti-”coordination. For example, when both agents coordinate on Bach, Player 1 insists, while Player 2 accommodates (I, A). In the “Methods”, we consider also a more general class of (anti-)coordination games, encompassing Hawk-Dove (or Chicken) and Leader.