Social: Theories and Models - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 253

Table 9.2 Suggestions for how to do well in iterated PD games (Axelrod 1984 )
1. Do not be envious: if you are envious in a situation where the payoffs are not symmetrical—the
other player gains more when you both cooperate—you may be tempted to defect, but in
doing so you may hurt yourself as well as the other player
2. Do not be the first to defect: this will allow you the chance to make a series of cooperative turns
3. Reciprocate both cooperation and defection: if the other person is choosing to defect and to
cooperate, modifying your strategies reminds them of the potential payoff, and encourages
them to choose a long-term strategy
4. Do not be too clever: you may be tempted to defect more often to take a little payoff now and
then. This may be possible in some games against some players, but Axelrod showed that this
strategy rarely ever works. In the real world, it appears to work sometimes, but often it does not
Table 9.3 Suggestions for how to promote cooperation between actors (Axelrod 1984 )
1. Enlarge the shadow of the future
2. Change the payoffs
3. Teach people to care about each other
4. Teach reciprocity
5. Improve recognition abilities
for cooperation can lead to the best behavior for both participants. Overall,
Axelrod found that a very good—and perhaps the best—strategy was to play tit-
for-tat, which involves starting by cooperating, then if an opponent defects, you
defect once, and then cooperate again.
There are several practical suggestions for improving social situations arising
out of Axelrod's work. These suggestions, some of which are noted in Table 9.2 ,
can be applied to system design, and you can see them play out on eBay, on
YouTube, and in Second Life. These suggestions apply to teamwork across a wide
range of domains. When they are applied across companies, however, they can
give rise to cartels and price fixing.
One thing that you will need to consider when designing systems that support
teamworking is that it will often take time for people to learn how to work
together. In other words, the strategies that they start with may change over time as
they learn how each other operates, and how they can work together to perform the
task at hand. In repeated iterations of the Prisoner's Dilemma game, for example,
Axelrod ( 1984 ) found that people can move towards a strategy of mutual coop-
eration over time. So you should try to support cooperation, and Axelrod suggested
five ways in which this can be achieved, as shown in Table 9.3 .
These suggestions apply to many situations, including classrooms, work envi-
ronments (including knowledge sharing tools), web site maintenance, online
auction sites, and public discussion forums.
To enlarge the shadow of the future you need to have people look beyond the
current iteration of the task. They need to see that there is a bigger picture in that
there may be higher level, longer term goals that need to be achieved, and that this