Should You Cheat, Cooperate, or Reciprocate?

Game theory's insights into competition, cooperation, and relationships.

Posted February 26, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

Our lives are full of choices and dilemmas. For example, should you share credit with a coworker or take all the praise yourself? Should you stay faithful to your mate (and hope they do, too) or distrust them and cheat when you can? In general, should you trust and cooperate with others or look out for yourself—even when it is at someone else's expense?

Game Theory and Life's Dilemmas

This question (and many others) has been explored by a discipline called "game theory." This discipline explores complex interactions, by modeling them down to simple "games." Each game highlights the basic dilemma of a situation, especially the costs and payoffs associated with every choice for each person involved.

Within a game, the "players" make choices, based on various rules, and reap an outcome—depending on what they do and what other players choose, too. Often, these games are played by real people to test various strategies and outcomes. Nevertheless, they can also be simulated by computer programs to see how they turn out as well.

Within game theory, one of the most fundamental games is called The Prisoner's Dilemma . This models a two-person situation, in which each player is given the choice to compete or cooperate. The classic setup for this game is that you have been arrested for a crime . You have an associate, also arrested, with whom you cannot communicate. You are given the choice to blame them for the crimes you are charged with by the police (compete) or remain silent (cooperate). Your associate is given the same options.

Initially, the choice seems simple: blame them and go free yourself. But, if they decide to blame you, too, then you both go to prison for a long, long time. Not so good.

Thus, you might consider cooperating and keeping quiet instead. If you both keep quiet, you'll probably be held for about a year and then get freed at trial. Not as good as immediate release, but not bad.

What if your associate blames you, though, while you remain silent? Then you go to prison, and they go free at your expense. Given that, how much would you trust them to keep quiet, especially when you can't talk things over with them?

Overall, the best bet is to blame your associate and try to get set free. But, they often make the same calculation and turn on you, too. So, the "best" strategy for each individual in this type of scenario, leads to the worst loss for them both. A grim outcome, but one we are all too familiar with in the world.

Simulations and Solutions

Nevertheless, in the real world, people do sometimes cooperate and trust instead. One of the reasons is that most relationships are built on repeated interactions, not a single choice. Usually, we play a game over many rounds with each other. So, if I act selfishly today, you can punish me by not cooperating tomorrow. That creates an incentive for everyone to play nice and get the benefits of cooperation .

To explore this repeated rounds scenario further, Axelrod (1984) organized a computer simulation contest, where theorists and programmers submitted strategies to play a version of the dilemma above. In this case, however, strategies played each other for many rounds. This allowed researchers to see how competitive and cooperative strategies would work out in the long run.

According to the results, selfish competitors were the biggest losers over time, while trusting cooperators did better in the long run. We see this in life, too. Act selfishly or compete and people stop "playing" with you. Trust or cooperate and people do the same with you instead.

The winning strategy, however, was being nice—but not a pushover. It was known as tit-for-tat (TFT). It began by cooperating. Nevertheless, if the other player acted selfishly and competed in a round, then TFT would respond by also acting selfishly in the next round. Thus, TFT ended up reciprocating and rewarding cooperation with cooperation, but punishing competition with competition, too.

Choices and Games in Your Life

The lessons from those results were summed up well by Axelrod (1984) as "don't be envious , don't be the first to defect, reciprocate both cooperation and defection, and don't be too clever." An excellent summation. Looking through my articles, as well as my relationship book Attraction Psychology , I can offer a bit more detail, too.

Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation . Basic Books.

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Jeremy Nicholson, M.S.W., Ph.D. , is a doctor of social and personality psychology, with a focus on influence, persuasion, and dating.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.