Recent Advances in Experimental Studies of Social Dilemma Games

The articles in this volume collectively represent the latest advances in how

people think of social dilemma problems, how we may be able to enhance cooperation

and reduce free-riding in such problems and how we can extend the lessons learned

to a host of other similar issues facing us. We have learned, for instance, that a “take”

frame does not necessarily lead to lower cooperation compared to a “give” frame

but combining a “take” frame with fine-grained individual level feedback leads to

more extreme behavior in terms of both greater cooperation and greater free-riding.

We have also learned that a strategy based on payoff sampling may provide a more

parsimonious and less parameter dependent way of modelling behavior in common

pool resource extraction games. We find that people behave differently in social

dilemmas when making decisions of their own as opposed to deciding on behalf of

someone else.