Recent lab experiments by Traulsen et al. for the spatial prisoner's dilemma suggest that exploratory behavior of human subjects prevents cooperation through neighborhood interactions over experimentally accessible time spans. This indicates that new theoretical and experimental efforts are needed to explore the mechanisms underlying a number of famous puzzles in the social sciences.
@article{arxiv.1012.4182,
title = {The Future of Social Experimenting},
author = {Dirk Helbing and Wenjian Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1012.4182},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
For an extended version with animated computer simulation see http://www.soms.ethz.ch/research/socialexperimenting