Cooperation in public dilemmas (and in externality dilemmas generally) is sometimes explained as a function of players' experience with the game: The more experience, the less cooperation. Experience, however, can produce both knowledge about how others will play the game (in particular, that they will defect) and improved understanding of the incentive structure of the game. We report data from two different experiments showing at best only a slight relationship between understanding the incentive structure of the game and cooperation. Inferences from the 'experience' finding that cooperation is based on misunderstanding of game incentives, therefore, seem misplaced.
A frequent finding in iterated social dilemma (or public goods) games is that cooperation becomes less frequent the more the game has been played . This result is characteristically explained in terms of players' gaining experience with the game, but, as the authors referenced generally recognize, experience can yield both an understanding of the incentive structure -in which defection is a dominating strategy -and information that others are likely to defect -so that cooperation in future plays will result in the sucker's payoff. Either type of information could be responsible for the higher probability of defection.
This note unconfounds these explanations by investigating (through questionnaires) whether, prior to experience with others' behavior, those whose understanding of monetary social dilemmas is poor will be more likely to cooperate than will those whose understanding is good. If so, the hypothesis that decline in cooperation rate is due to increased understanding of structure is supported. If not, this decline must be attributed to an increased understanding of how others choose.
Experiment 1
This experiment was conducted in Logan, Utah; it was designed to test for behavioral differences between social dilemmas conducted under collective