Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/103532 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 8499
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Intelligence affects social outcomes of groups. A systematic study of the link is provided in an experiment where two groups of subjects with different levels of intelligence, but otherwise similar, play a repeated prisoner's dilemma. The initial cooperation rates are similar, it increases in the groups with higher intelligence to reach almost full cooperation, while declining in the groups with lower intelligence. The difference is produced by the cumulation of small but persistent differences in the response to past cooperation of the partner. In higher intelligence subjects, cooperation after the initial stages is immediate and becomes the default mode, defection instead requires more time. For lower intelligence groups this difference is absent. Cooperation of higher intelligence subjects is payoff sensitive, thus not automatic: in a treatment with lower continuation probability there is no difference between different intelligence groups.
Subjects: 
repeated prisoner dilemma
cooperation
intelligence
JEL: 
C73
C92
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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