“Do humans play according to the game theory when facing the social dilemma situation?” A survey study

Abstract

The aim of this study is to verify whether a human can detect the social dilemma class and its strength for four various games: Prisoner’s dilemma, Trivial, Chicken, and Stag-Hunt by using a web-based structural cross-sectional survey. We considered respondent’s cooperative and defective behavior by designing multiple sets of 2 × 2 games for two classes in terms of game opponents: whether he is an intimate friend or an unknown person in the questionnaire. In total, 375 respondents participated in this survey. We found that Prisoner’s dilemma and Trivial game are recognized easily by the respondents, but they are not aware of the dilemma strength and difference of game opponent’s attribute whether the opponent is a close or unknown person.