Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Experimental Study Of Within- And Cross-Cultural Cooperation: Chinese And American Play In The Prisoner’S Dilemma Game, Michael Kuroda, Jieran Li, Jason Shachat, Lijia Wei, Bochen Zhu

ESI Working Papers

We study whether cross- and within-culture groups have different cooperation rates in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. In an experiment, university students in China and America engage in a single iteration of the game, complete belief elicitation tasks regarding their opponents’ play and take a survey including attitudinal measurements regarding their in- and out-group attitudes. Cooperation rates are higher across the two countries are higher in both cross-culture and in within-culture interactions, although not significantly. We also find that Chinese participants cooperate less than American ones. Further, female Chinese participants are more cooperative than Chinese male ones. In the cross-culture treatment, …