Resumen de Friend or Foe? A Natural Experiment of the Prisoner's Dilemma

John A. List

• This study examines data drawn from the game show Friend or Foe? which is similar to the classic prisoner's dilemma tale: partnerships are endogenously determined, and players work together to earn money, after which they play a one-shot prisoner's dilemma game over large stakes: varying from $200 to (potentially) more than $22,000. The data reveal several interesting insights; perhaps most provocatively, they suggest that even though the game is played in front of an audience of millions of viewers, some of the evidence is consistent with a model of discrimination. The observed patterns of social discrimination are unanticipated, however.