Risk and Temptation: A Meta‐study on Prisoner's Dilemma Games

This article reports the results of a meta‐study of 96 prisoner's dilemma studies comprising more than 3,500 participants. I disentangle the role of ‘risk’ (to co‐operate unilaterally) and ‘temptation’ (to defect against a co‐operator) and find that: (i) an index of risk best explains the variation in co‐operation rates across one‐shot games, while (ii) an index of temptation best explains the variation in finitely repeated games. Risk and temptation indices also affect gender comparisons. Women are more co‐operative than the average man if risk is low and less co‐operative if risk is high. There are no gender differences on average.