Z:gnu-www-ja-frank--74136c-One of the most celebrated and/en

One of the most celebrated and controversial predictions of the self-interest model is that people will always defect in one-shot prisoner's dilemmas. The game thus provides an opportunity to examine the extent to which various groups exhibit self-interested behavior. Accordingly, we conducted a large one-shot prisoner's dilemma experiment involving both economics majors and nonmajors. Many of our subjects were students recruited from courses in which the prisoner's dilemma is an item on the syllabus. Others were given a detailed briefing about the game.