In economics and biology, the terms "conditional cooperation" and "indirect reciprocity" are used to describe behavior, where subjects condition their behavior in stage t of a repeated game on the opponent's reputation (see Bolton, Katok, Ockenfels / J Pub Econ 2006), or where subjects play a one-shot game and condition their behavior on the opponent's expected behavior (see Fischbacher, Gächter, Fehr / Economic Letters 2001). I’m wondering whether there is a difference between "conditional cooperation" and "indirect reciprocity," or whether these terms are interchangeable?
While related, the terms are not used interchangeably. The term Reciprocity is widely used in many different contexts in different disciplines such as Behavioural Economics, Evolutionary Game Theory or Psychology. Basically, different disciplines call it reciprocity if they refer to or model "an eye for an eye." Indirect Reciprocity is a term that is mainly used in evolutionary game theory, where the main concern is if cooperation can be sustained in a population if people condition their behaviour in a hard-wired manner on the reputation of their randomly assigned partner.
Conditional cooperation comes from experimental and behavioural economics.it basically describes behaviour that is observed in many humans in experiments featuring repeated social dilemma situations. The pattern is that a person is giving others the benefit of the doubt and initially cooperate. However, as soon as they observe their partners not cooperating they withdraw their concern for others and stop cooperating. This is some kind of negative reciprocity.
Indirect reciprocity is one type of conditional cooperation. Direct reciprocity is also one type of conditional cooperation. Thus, conditional cooperation is more broad than indirect reciprocity.
Indirect reciprocity is to cooperate under the condition that the opponent's reputation is good, roughly speaking. Direct reciprocity is to cooperate under the condition that the opponent cooperated, roughly speaking. Both indirect reciprocity and direct reciprocity are conditional cooperation.
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