Are smarter groups more cooperative? Evidence from prisoner's dilemma experiments, 1959–2003

Abstract

Are more intelligent groups better at cooperating? A meta-study of repeated prisoner's dilemma experiments run at numerous universities suggests that students cooperate 5–8% more often for every 100-point increase in the school's average SAT score. This result survives a variety of robustness tests. Axelrod [Axelrod, R., 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic Books, New York] recommends that the way to create cooperation is to encourage players to be patient and perceptive; experimental evidence suggests that more intelligent groups implicitly follow this advice.