Abstract

The possibility of the emergence of cooperation in the one-shot Prisoner Dilemma has gained growing attention in contemporary literature, in particular in the experimental domain. The aim of this paper is to offer a contribution for a theory that could explain cooperative behaviour even in the presence of individual incentives to free-ride. Focusing on the theory of we-rationality the paper proposes an overview of the different versions of that theory and a formalization of cooperation based on this form of rationality.