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Written By: Agencies | Published : July 20, 2014 12:15 PM IST
Spanish researchers joined forces to explore cooperative attitudes across all ages, concluding that teenagers are most fickle, while people over age 66 are the most likely to lend a hand. In the experimental study, 168 participants between 10 and 87 years of age who had been selected at random from the Barcelona Board Games Festival (Festival DAU Barcelona de Juegos de Mesa) played a game via web interface that generates Prisoner's Dilemma type situations. (Read: Fighting stereotypes of old age)
Prisoner's Dilemma is a game based on the theory that two rational individuals might not necessarily cooperate even if it is in their best interests to do so. The game, formalized in the 1950s, inspired a host of literary and media works including the 1988 novel 'Prisoner's Dilemma' by American author Richard Powers.
The situations that Prisoner's Dilemma can present make for an effective way to analyze individuals' attitudes towards cooperation, according to researchers.
In the laboratory, participants were divided based on age into four groups and an additional control group, then asked to play 25 consecutive rounds in which the game rewarded them based on their tendency to cooperate. Players were kept abreast of opponents' decisions and reward tallies were accessible to all. Rewards were transferred into actual money that participants received at the end of the study, although in the case of minors, their parents received it. (Read: With the wisdom of old-age comes less hangovers!)
'In general, people consider what others have done when they collaborate, but our experiments show that adults also consider their own previous actions,' says Yamir Moreno of the University of Zaragoza, explaining how the game unfolded for the elders. 'That is to say, there is a different strategy in the way they act and there is a tendency to end up cooperating; the way they act is more predictable and it helps a bit in keeping up the cooperation.'
As Moreno implies, the younger set threw a wrench into the results by abandoning strategy and cooperating based on the actions of other players. 'Kids' tendency is to watch what the other players are doing and react according to their response, instead of being conditioned by their own past actions,' says Mario Guti rrez-Roig of of the Complex Systems Interdisciplinary Group (Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos -- GISC). 'This makes it difficult for a cooperative environment to be generated.' (Read: Key to happiness? Parenthood!)
While results clearly imply that one's penchant for cooperation increases with age, Professor Anxo S nchez of GISC says his team has yet to fully grasp just what makes retirement age people the most cooperative, and that further testing is necessary. 'These results lead us to think that there is an evolutionary and cultural component throughout the life cycle, and that being prone to cooperate is a quality that can be learned,' emphasizes Carlos Gracia-L zaro of the University of Zaragoza. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Source: AFP
Image Source: Getty Images
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