One-shot exchange networks and the shadow of the future

From the Prisoner's Dilemma and other games, it is well known that strategy selection in one-shot games can be very different from that in iterated games. Because exchange structures were studied only as iterated games, whether one-shot structures differ was not known. Nor have exchange theories previously considered whether events in structures Would be different if studied as one-shot games. This paper offers new theory to predict one-shot exchange structures and one-shot experiments to test that theory. As predicted, the experiments found that processes and Outcomes of one-shot exchange structures are quite different from those of iterated exchange structures. For example, certain relations that are strategically used as threats in iterated exchange Structures occur very rarely in one-shot structures. It follows that power differences in one-shot structures regress from those observed for repeated structures. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.