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Concept

Prisoner's dilemma

Game in which each player does better alone by not cooperating, though both would do better if both cooperated.

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developed by

Timeline 2 dates
  1. 1950 Melvin Dresher developed Prisoner's dilemma
  2. 1950 Merrill Flood developed Prisoner's dilemma
Proof 1 source
  1. Prisoner's Dilemma (entry, first published 1997, revised 24 Oct 2025), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 24 Oct 2025. Scholarship & press
    The “discovery” of the prisoner’s dilemma is usually attributed to Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher.
    In early 1950, they conducted an experiment in which they persuaded a couple of their professional colleagues to play a game with the payoff structure of the prisoner’s dilemma one hundred times in succession.
    The illustrative story with prison sentences as payoffs is due to Albert Tucker, who wanted to make the ideas behind Flood and Dresher’s game more accessible to an audience of Stanford psychologists.
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