Condensed Matter Physics, 2014, vol. 17, No. 3, p. 33001
DOI:10.5488/CMP.17.33001

Title: Iterated Prisoners Dilemma with limited attention
Author(s):
  U. Çetin (Department of Computer Engineering, Bogazici University, 34342 Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey; Department of Computer Engineering, Istanbul Gelisim University, 34310 Avcilar, Istanbul, Turkey) ,
  H.O. Bingol (Department of Computer Engineering, Bogazici University, 34342 Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey)

How attention scarcity effects the outcomes of a game? We present our findings on a version of the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma (IPD) game in which players can accept or refuse to play with their partner. We study the memory size effect on determining the right partner to interact with. We investigate the conditions under which the cooperators are more likely to be advantageous than the defectors. This work demonstrates that, in order to beat defection, players do not need a full memorization of each action of all opponents. There exists a critical attention capacity threshold to beat defectors. This threshold depends not only on the ratio of the defectors in the population but also on the attention allocation strategy of the players.

Key words: scarcity of attention, cooperation, memory size effect, iterated prisoners dilemma, social and economic models
PACS: 02.50.Le, 87.23.Ge, 07.05.Tp


Full text [pdf] << List of papers