Exploration of games in which punishment is possible and cheating is not automatically detected reveals that norms can emerge and stabilize only if those who fail to punish violators are also punished.
The Tit-for-Tat strategy is vulnerable to noise – errors in implementing choices – that can lead to echoing defections, but can be made less sensitive by adding generosity (occasionally refraining from punishing defection by opponent) and contrition (refraining from punishing a reaction to accidental defection.)"
The genetic algorithm uses computer simulations to evolve different strategies for playing Prisoner's Dilemma games, and by observing the interactions of populations of agents over many runs, it is possible to make useful observations that could generalize to human behavior – such as the tendency of reciprocation to establish itself and spread if cooperating agents are able to encounter one another.
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