(Phys.org) —Nice people are not always good people. Those who have always felt this intuitively can feel vindicated by the results of a recently published theoretical study: For the so-called Prisoner ...

In repeated social interactions, extortionate behaviour can pay off. This conclusion was reached by US scientists a few years ago. According to their calculations, strategies based on extortion can be ...

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a popular experiment among game theoreticians, which they use to study human social conduct. It involves two players, each of whom has no knowledge about the other, deciding ...

A report in the New York Evening Post in 1817 fell into the trap. "J. Sommers [sic], a Jew Pawn-Broker, in Chatham-street" the story ran, "was convicted and fined on Friday last, one hundred dollars, ...

In a time of income inequality and ruthless politics, people with outsized power or an unrelenting willingness to browbeat others often seem to come out ahead. New research from Dartmouth, however, ...

Extortionists in Peru are becoming ever bolder: executing bus drivers at the wheel and detonating bombs at schools, holding the country in a grip of fear as police struggle to crack down. It is a ...

This news release is available in German. Participants in major political conferences could write a book about it: negotiations constantly fail due to the uncooperative and selfish behaviour of ...