Prisoner's Dilemma vs Sucker Affect

[Learner]

What are the differences/similarities/relation between the Prisoner's Dilemma vs Sucker Affect?

My question stems from a senate hearing on Copyright law in which a proponent of a bill is envoking the "Free Rider" problem. Specifically, he is saying that if the NIH is to bypass copyright law by making research papers freely available to the public online, then non US taxpayers will then also benefit from the research on the taxpayer's dime.

So, when looking up the free rider problem, I came across the term sucker affect/aversion - the definition of which sounds very similar to the Prisoner's dilemma.

So my question is: What's the difference between the Prisoner's Dilemma and Sucker Affect?

 

[g5000]

What are the differences/similarities/relation between the Prisoner's Dilemma vs Sucker Affect?

My question stems from a senate hearing on Copyright law in which a proponent of a bill is envoking the "Free Rider" problem. Specifically, he is saying that if the NIH is to bypass copyright law by making research papers freely available to the public online, then non US taxpayers will then also benefit from the research on the taxpayer's dime.

So, when looking up the free rider problem, I came across the term sucker affect/aversion - the definition of which sounds very similar to the Prisoner's dilemma.

So my question is: What's the difference between the Prisoner's Dilemma and Sucker Affect?

It's not obvious?

First of all, you managed to touch on one of my pet peeves.

This should be a topic about the difference between Effect and Affect.

The Sucker Effect is when people in a group do not work as hard individually than they would on their own. This is the desire on the part of each person in the group not to do more than one's "fair share" of labor and therefore permit someone else to be a slacker.

Every asshole professor who assigns projects to groups of students is actually encouraging this effect and as a result does not get the best effort out of his students. And that is because the professor himself is being lazy because he wants to have to grade as few projects as possible.


The copyright issue you mentioned is also a case of the Sucker Effect. A bunch of people who pay taxes don't want to pay for something that someone else will get to use for free. This makes the taxpayers feel like suckers. This is a central platform of Republicans everywhere.


There is no "fairness" factor in the Prisoner's Dilemma. Instead of trying to avoid being used by someone else, the prisoner is trying to figure out the best advantage for himself. He also has to factor in all the possible behaviors of the other prisoner and how it affects his own outcome. How the other prisoner behaves affects the outcome for both prisoners.

In the Sucker Effect, what the other members of the group do has no effect on one's personal outcome. Whether they use the fruits of your labor or don't use the fruits of your labor does not change the outcome of your life in any way.

 

[DSGE]

In terms of game theory, they're structurally identical.

Choices 1 and 2 can be not defect/defect from Prisoner's Dilemma, or they can be effort/no effort from Sucker Effect. Both games have a dominant strategy which results in a unique Nash equilibrium which isn't Pareto efficient.