Can large language models overcome opportunistic behavior in the prisoner's dilemma ?

Authors

  • Ting Kang School of Economics and Management, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.63313/AERpc.2005

Keywords:

Large Language Models, The Prisoner's Dilemma, Opportunistic Behavior

Abstract

Large language models as a tool for simulating humans still need to be explored to a large extent. There is still a lack of exploration of whether the behavioral response of large language models to simple social stimuli is consistent with human behavior and whether it can behave in accordance with human behavior under certain environmental incentives. Testing their behavioral responses in classical behavioral game experiments provides a theoretical framework for evaluating the ability of LLMs to simulate humans. In this study, the behaviors of ERNIE-Speed-128K, qwen2-1.5b-instruct and gpt-4o-mini in the one-time pris-oner dilemma and the iterated prisoner's dilemma were studied, and the effects of three different motivational strategies on their behavioral responses in the iterated prisoner's dilemma were explored. The study found that the large lan-guage model can overcome the opportunistic behavior in the prisoner's dilemma through repeated interactions, and the large language model can perform better by adopting incentive strategies. This paper provides new insights for further research on the combination of large language models and social sciences.

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Published

2025-03-31

How to Cite

Can large language models overcome opportunistic behavior in the prisoner’s dilemma ?. (2025). Advances in Engineering Research : Possibilities and Challenges, 1(1), 152-165. https://doi.org/10.63313/AERpc.2005