Reciprocation and altruism in social cooperation

• People cooperated in a prisoner’s dilemma game even when reciprocation was impossible.
• Cooperation was higher when the benefit to the other player increased.
• Pure altruism, in addition to reciprocation, plays a role in social cooperation.

Altruistic behavior benefits other individuals at a cost to oneself. The purpose of the present experiment was to study altruistic behavior by players (P) in 2-person iterated prisoner’s dilemma games in which reciprocation by the other player (OP) was impossible, and this impossibility was clear to P. Altruism by P could not therefore be attributed to expectation of reciprocation. The cost to P of altruistic behavior was constant throughout the study, but the benefit to OP from P’s cooperation differed between groups and conditions. Rate of cooperation was higher when benefit to OP was higher. Thus altruism (not attributable to expectation of reciprocation) can be a significant factor in interpersonal relationships as studied in iterated prisoner’s dilemma games, and needs to be taken into account in their analysis.