In the past few decades, numerous experiments have shown that humans do not always behave so as to maximize their material payoff. Cooperative behavior when noncooperation is a dominant strategy (with respect to the material payoffs) is particularly puzzling. Here we propose a novel approach to explain cooperation, assuming what Halpern and Pass call translucent players. Typically, players are assumed to be opaque, in the sense that a deviation by one player in a normal-form game does not affect the strategies used by other players. However, a player may believe that if he switches from one strategy to another, the fact that he chooses to switch may be visible to the other players. For example, if he chooses to defect in Prisoner’s Dilemma, the other player may sense his guilt. We show that by assuming translucent players, we can recover many of the regularities observed in human behavior in well-studied games such as Prisoner’s Dilemma, Traveler’s Dilemma, Bertrand Competition, and the Public Goods game. The approach can also be extended to take into account a player’s concerns that his social group (or God) may observe his actions. This extension helps explain prosocial behavior in situations in which previous models of social behavior fail to make correct predictions (e.g. conflict situations and situations where there is a trade-off between equity and efficiency).

中文翻译：

---

半透明玩家：解释社会困境中的合作行为

在过去的几十年里，大量的实验表明，人类的行为并不总是为了最大化他们的物质回报。当不合作是主导策略时（就物质回报而言），合作行为尤其令人费解。在这里，我们提出了一种解释合作的新方法，假设 Halpern 和 Pass 称之为半透明玩家。通常，玩家被假定为不透明的，因为一个玩家在正常形式游戏中的偏离不会影响其他玩家使用的策略。然而，玩家可能认为，如果他从一种策略切换到另一种策略，其他玩家可能会看到他选择切换的事实。例如，如果他在囚徒困境中选择叛逃，其他玩家可能会感到内疚。我们证明，通过假设半透明玩家，在囚徒困境、旅行者困境、伯特兰竞争和公共物品博弈等经过充分研究的博弈中，我们可以恢复在人类行为中观察到的许多规律。该方法还可以扩展到考虑玩家的担忧，即他的社会群体（或上帝）可能会观察他的行为。这种扩展有助于解释在以前的社会行为模型无法做出正确预测的情况下（例如冲突情况和公平与效率之间权衡的情况）下的亲社会行为。