Kind and Forgiving Players Come Out Ahead Over Time
Selfish and retaliatory strategies look smart in the moment, but they leave players worse off over time.
Make Me Smile with Miist · Ep. 48: Be AuthenticWhen people meet again and again, kind, cooperative, and forgiving players come out ahead.
In repeated games, researcher Robert Axelrod found cooperative and forgiving strategies did better over the long run, while selfish and retaliatory strategies left players worse off over time.
Singer-songwriter Miist, who describes learning as a small child to be quiet, self-contained, and obedient to fit her parents' needs, sees this in personal terms. In her view, separate from the research finding, people start out cooperative and learn to act otherwise under family and social pressure.
Questions people ask
What did Axelrod's studies actually involve?
Axelrod is best known for computer tournaments in the 1980s based on the Prisoner's Dilemma, a game where two players repeatedly choose to cooperate or cheat. The winning program cooperated first, answered a cheat with a cheat, and then returned to cooperating. That pattern encouraged long runs of mutual benefit.
Does being forgiving mean letting other people take advantage of you?
No. The most successful approach cooperated first and answered cheating with one round of pushback. It then went back to cooperating as soon as the other side did, which discouraged exploitation without holding a grudge.
Are people really born kind and cooperative?
Not exactly. Research by Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello found that children as young as 18 months try to help an unfamiliar adult who drops something. That shows helping can appear very early, but it does not prove that people are innately good.