Cooperation to the Fullest Extent Possible? An Infinitely Repeated

I experimentally investigate a new game that modifies the prisoner’s dilemma. In this game, as opposed to the regular prisoner’s dilemma, there is no tradeoff between cooperation and strategic risk (uncertainty regarding the other player’s strategy) that is the leading explanation for low cooperation rates found in past experiments with small discount factors. The main finding is that there is still not pervasive cooperation; the cooperation rate is less than 50% in both repeated game treatments. I argue that specific complexities inherent to repeated games and slightly more strategic uncertainty than traditionally modeled inhibit the emergence of full cooperation