The prisoners' dilemma reality is different

Actually this is a bit of o big deal:  so many bits of economic and sociological thinking are based on this bit of game theory (and I contend it should be ~s' not ~'s so I've corrected the quote):

... the prisoners' dilemma, a classic example in game theory showing why individuals might not cooperate.... a thought experiment. No one had ever actually tested it on real prisoners. ...Surprisingly, for the classic version of the game, prisoners were far more cooperative than expected. The prisoner's dilemma, in real life

In fact it's a bit of a warning to all economic theory which is one huge thought experiment rarely perturbed by actual testing of the theories in real life situations. I was tought economics which was almost exclusively thought-experiment stuff and it is all so believable because we are more rational in our own minds than we often are in our behaviour.

So next time you hear capitalistic selfishness justified on the basis of thought-experiment economic arguments remember this. As some of the comments bring out, we might also want to ponder the possible effects of culture and socialisation on the one hand and on the other whether gender has an effect. But whatever the factors turning people from purely rational calculative responses, the important thing to note is that the kind of thinking on which we base our economics -which is what our government is using- is flawed as a model for human behaviour. It turns out we tend to favour sociable nice-ness more than the thought-experiments would lead us to expect. It's time we started to build our policies on behaviourally-researched economics.