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Chapter 4 Social Dilemmas and Game Theory Game theory is the study of interdependent decision making. It analyzes situations in which outcomes depend on the decisions of more than one individual . Social dilemmas are a particular type of game in which the individual’s self-interest con›icts with the optimal social outcome. For instance, self-interested individuals optimize by not paying for public goods like public radio or television but consume them anyway. However, if everyone did the same presumably everyone would be worse off because the services would not be provided. Properly constructed, it is always instrumentally rational to withhold contributions. If others provide the service the agent consumes without paying for it; if the service isn’t provided the agent is no worse off because she didn’t contribute. More broadly, it is in my interest that you but not I contribute to all that makes society civilized (taxes to pay for protection, public health, education, social safety nets, etc.). Or consider the overanalyzed Prisoner’s Dilemma game, the focal point of this chapter. Two suspects in a crime are caught. The district attorney has enough evidence to put the suspects in jail, but a confession would increase jail time. So the DA tells each suspect that if one confesses but the other does not, the confessor gets a light sentence while the other gets a lengthy stay in jail. If neither confesses, each gets some jail time, but less than if both confess. It turns out that while both would be better off keeping their mouths shut, instrumental rationality dictates that both sing like birds. The Prisoner’s Dilemma game describes a lot of two-agent interactions, especially the kind where agents might misrepresent their intended actions (e.g., a prospective employer says she will provide a good working environment when it is cheaper for her not to, and the prospective employee says she will work hard even though she really likes to drink lots of coffee). Yet we know that people do contribute to public goods, pay their taxes, vote, leave tips, help strangers, keep their agreements, and cooperate in all manner of ex54 perimental games in contraposition to their interests as usually concocted. The question is why, and what role could integrity play? To make the discussion more concrete, I will introduce the Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a numerical example. This makes it easier to both properly understand the social dilemma and also see the various explanations for how cooperation could result. We will also see that the notion of preferenceintegrity yields novel results for contexts where nonbinding agreements are made. Those with suf‹cient preference-integrity might keep their word with partners of unknown intent, contrary to traditional predictions. The second part of the chapter considers the more recent development of evolutionary game theory. Evolutionary biology, metaphorically or literally, provides the inspiration for a new sort of game theory in which the focus becomes traits (e.g., preferences) and how they are selected for over time. An evolutionarily stable equilibrium is a state of affairs in which existing traits get the same payoffs, and no other traits could invade and get a higher payoff. These kinds of analyses can reveal the evolutionary conditions in which cooperation and sel‹shness exist simultaneously and persist over time. We will see that preference-integrity can ‹t into at least some kinds of evolutionary analyses, but that commitment-integrity could not because of its nonnatural ethical foundations (the individual makes judgments about right versus wrong in committing to moral principles). Still, persons of commitment-integrity could be affected by evolutionary forces to the extent that anything that affects preferences could change the cost of commitments relative to a given will, thereby indirectly affecting acts chosen. Thus, while commitmentintegrity can not be naturalized, it could include naturalistic elements and hence constitute a framework that accommodates both. 4.1. The Prisoner’s Dilemma Consider the Prisoner’s Dilemma game shown in table 4.1. There are two players, each of which has two options: cooperate or defect. For example, in an employment context, player 1 could be a worker; to cooperate means to work hard, to defect means to shirk. For player 2, the employer, to cooperate means to provide a good working environment, to defect means otherwise. The numbers give the payoffs for each possibility (player 2’s payoff is always on the left of the comma, player 1’s payoff to the right). So if both...

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