Forgiveness, cooperation, and present bias in the infinitely iterated Prisoner’s dilemma

Minwook Kang

doi:10.1007/s11238-025-10029-z

Forgiveness, cooperation, and present bias in the infinitely iterated Prisoner’s dilemma

Minwook Kang^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

How does present bias affect the propensity to forgive or punish? To explore this question, we employ quasi-hyperbolic discounting within the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. The primary results from theoretical and simulation studies demonstrate that present bias impedes the sustainability of forgiving or lenient strategies (e.g., Tit-for-Tat with or without additional forgiveness, and Win-Stay, Lose-Shift) in a Nash equilibrium. However, this bias does not significantly impact the likelihood of sustaining cooperation for punitive strategies (e.g., the grim trigger).

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	573-591
Number of pages	19
Journal	Theory and Decision
Volume	99
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-025-10029-z
Publication status	Published - 2025 Nov

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025.

Keywords

Cooperation
Forgiveness strategies
Iterated prisoner’s dilemma
Present bias
Tit-for-tat

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Decision Sciences
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Applied Psychology
General Social Sciences
General Economics,Econometrics and Finance
Computer Science Applications

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10.1007/s11238-025-10029-z

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KW - Tit-for-tat

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ER -

Forgiveness, cooperation, and present bias in the infinitely iterated Prisoner’s dilemma

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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