THE HIDDEN RULES OF PROFESSIONAL LIFE: A DISCREET GAME THEORY-BASED STUDY

Abstract

This study examines how the behavioral foundations of professional life trust, cooperation, retaliation, forgiveness, and long-term strategy emerge from repeated strategic interactions. Inspired by Robert Axelrod’s 1980 Prisoner’s Dilemma tournament, a classroom experiment was conducted wherein students played 55 rounds of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma using ten pre-defined strategies such as Always Cooperate, Tit for Tat, Conditional Retaliator, and High-Defect Random patterns. The scoring matrix mirrored workplace trade-offs between collaboration and short-term self-interest. Findings indicate that strategies balancing cooperation with principled retaliation achieved higher cumulative scores, while exploitative or highly inconsistent strategies underperformed. These results parallel the realities of professional conduct and demonstrate that long-term professional success is grounded in consistency, fairness, and strategic reciprocity.