Prisoner’s Dilemma

I was forced to think deeply over the concept of ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ ever since we studied the topic in our economics class the other day. For those who are not aware of it, here is the explanation using an example from Wikipedia for your understanding:

“The classical prisoner's dilemma (PD) is as follows: Two suspects, A and B, are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both stay silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent. However, neither prisoner knows for sure what choice the other prisoner will make. So this dilemma poses the question: How should the prisoners act?



In deciding upon this kind of a situation, both the prisoners will try to reduce their risk and also try to predict what the other prisoner will do. If Prisoner A confesses his crime and Prisoner B does not, he would walk free without having to serve any sentence at all and the opposite is also true. If both the prisoners do not confess their crime at all, both of them would walk away with a minor sentence of just 6 months, which seems like a win-win situation for both of them. They are also told that if both of them confess then they will both have to serve a term of 5 years.

In this kind of a scenario, it is usually seen that both the prisoners will not confess and hence serve a term of 5 years each. The paradox of the situation lies in the fact that that both of them will confess no matter what even though they are fully aware that they would be better off had they not confessed. This happens mainly when each of them try to judge how the other prisoner would behave and accordingly try to reduce their own risk.”

When the same is seen in context with various kinds of competitions and the system of relative grading in our college, the results could be startling. In the case of competitions which would provide a chance to individuals to mutually accept a win-win situation for both, they would not normally do so and would defect thus resulting in a lower win for each of the competitors. Even when it comes to relative grading, students could arrive at a common consensus where each would be benefit out of sharing rather than being frightened of their peers and over working or stressing out. However, would this does not normally happen and it leads to a situation where one is not sure about the other and at the same time wants to reduce his chances of losing out leading to a relatively poor result for both.

Research also shows that when Prisoner’s Dilemma is played more than once in succession (with both the players having memory of the previous encounter, then there can be more cooperative outcomes beneficial for both.

Will that be one of the situations that we could encounter on the campus?

There would definitely be many more such scenarios which we would come across in the course of our stay. From inter-house competitions, to individuals working in group projects, to forming groups to negotiate deals from the council or the management, to the placements; these dilemmas would certainly affect most of us. Our reactions would be interesting to study to see if we actually end up mutually co-operating with each other or not.