Cooperation For Fun And Profit

In many situations, cooperation benefits not only the group, but each individual involved as well.

That is what I learned today as I lay in an fMRI, kitted out with headphones, a simple game controller, a blood pressure cuff, and a Vitamin E pill taped to my forehead. I was a research subject playing a version of the Prisoner's Dilemma: Player 1 chooses either 'cooperate' or 'defect', then Player 2, having seen that choice, also decides between cooperating and defecting. If both players cooperate, they each get two dollars. If both defect, they each get one dollar. If one player cooperates and the other defects, though, the defector gets three dollars and the cooperator gets nothing.

In all the rounds I played, defecting against a cooperator was never worth the extra dollar in the long run. Even without taking morality into the equation, cooperation was the better option, as the extreme lack of cooperation following a defection resulted in less earnings for both participants.

On the other hand, if there's one thing I've learned in science classes about studies such as this, it's that test subjects are rarely told what's actually going on and what the research is actually about, so I'm certainly not an authority on what was happening in that game. It's distinctly possible that I was on psychoactive drugs during the game (I don't know whether I was given a drug or the placebo), and I strongly suspect that the people I was playing the game with weren't given the same instructions as I was.

Because of this, I'll end with a more definite fact: A Vitamin E pill can serve as a handy point of reference when looking at images from an fMRI.