For almost two decades, Virginia has used risk assessment to justify “alternative” nonprison sentences for eligible drug and property offenders. In Study 1, we examined how frequently alternative sentences actually were imposed. We found that alternative sentences were given to only 42% of...

We examine the effect of payoff variations on cooperation in one-shot prisoner's dilemma games. We focus on three factors: risk, temptation, and efficiency, which we vary as orthogonal treatments. We find that temptation has the largest impact on cooperation. Temptation directly deters...

The prisoner's dilemma (PD) is arguably the most important model of social dilemmas, but our knowledge about how a PD's material payoff structure affects cooperation is incomplete. In this paper we investigate the effect of variation in material payoffs on cooperation, focussing on one-shot PD...

The prisoner's dilemma (PD) is arguably the most important model of social dilemmas, but our knowledge about how a PD’s material payoff structure affects cooperation is incomplete. In this paper we investigate the effect of variation in material payoffs on cooperation, focussing on one-shot PD...