Question

Do you agree that these options - either begrudingly work hard to get to the top, or improve your moral, intellectual and social life - constitute a Prisoner's Dilemma's game? Explain using a payoff matrix?

Answer 1

The prisoner's dilemma is a standard example that demonstrates why two completely rational individuals might not co-operate with each other even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so.

In the above payoff Matrix there are two players ,player 1 and player 2 ,both are working in in a corporate where they have two choices either to work hard and reach the top or to choose their social life over work and do not reach the top .Each player has no means of communicating with the other.

Each player is given an opportunity either to work harder to socialize and there are three possible outcomes :-

1). both player one and two work hard and reach the top leading to a payoff -1 each .

2) One of the players work hard and the other one socializes making one able to reach the top and the other does not reach the top leading to a payoff of 0 and -3 .

3).if both socialize ,both of them will not reach the top leading to a payoff - 2 each.

Now we see that when one player decides to socialize while the other one is working hard offers a greater reward than cooperating with them, all purely rational self interested players will betray each other meaning the only possible outcome for two purely rational players is to socialize . logically they would have receive the better reward if they would have worked hard however systematic bias towards Cooperative behaviour lead to this outcome of both the players choosing to socialize.