The impact of personality on behavior in five Prisoner's Dilemma games

There is a huge body of literature on both theoretical and experimental res earch of behavior in Prisoner's Dilemma and similar non-cooperative setting s. Despite this impressive stock of knowledge, our understanding of the det erminants of (non-)cooperative behavior remains limited. An important reaso n is that the economic approach tends to start from the untenable assumptio n of the homo anonymous. The purpose of the present study is to explore the potential gain of cross-fertilizing insights from economics and psychology by relaxing this assumption in a market setting (a Prisoner's Dilemma - du opoly pricing) game. More specifically, it is argued that economic agents d iffer as to their inclination toward cooperation. To analyze this issue, we conducted an experiment at the University Maastricht. We investigate the e ffect of personality on competitive versus cooperative behavior in five Pri soner's Dilemma games. Specifically, the paper deals with four personality traits: locus of control, self-monitoring, type-A behavior and sensation se eking. The experiment clearly shows that personality matters. By way of app raisal, the implications of our findings are discussed. (C) 1999 Elsevier S cience B.V. All rights reserved. PsycINFO classification. 2300; 3020; 3120; 3640; 3660 JEL classification: L2; M2.