Law Commons^™

Defining The Prisoners' Dilemma, Wendy J. Gordon

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Formally, a prisoner's dilemma is defined as follows: There are two participants symmetrically situated. For each player, her payoff if she refuses to cooperate with the other player is higher than her payoff would be if she cooperated, and this is true whether the other chooses to cooperate, or chooses to defect. If both cooperate, her payoff will be higher than if both defect.