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d > p/(1-p)b. These are the same condition needed for CWL and ONLYL, respectively, and, as discussed above, these ranges is strictly smaller than the range of values over which CWOL is an equilibrium.

To summarize, CWOL can occur in equilibrium, and this equilibrium is subgame perfect, is stable, and has a sizable basin of attraction in the replicator dynamics. Moreover, we expect player 2 to prefer interacting with player 1s who do not look and player 1s to actively avoid looking when defection is harmful and the temptation to defect is usually small but sometimes huge. Finally, under these conditions, cooperation can be sustained only if player 1 can avoid looking and player 2 can observe whether player 1 looks.

While we modeled player 1 looking at the temptation to defect, we could analogously have modeled player 1 looking at the benefits to cooperating. This can be interpreted as looking to see if anyone is watching, asking what one will get, or calculating the value of the ongoing relationship. In this and some similar cases, the modifications to the model would be straightforward and analysis would be equivalent.

We now apply the model to shed light on a number of interesting phenomena, including why we dislike “flip-flopping” politicians and respect principled people more generally, why people cooperate intuitively, why people feel disgust when considering taboo trade-offs, and why people fall in love.

We trust candidates for political office whose policies are the result of their convictions and are consistent over time, and distrust those whose policies are carefully constructed in consultation with their pollsters and who “flip-flop” in response to public opinion, as caricatured by the infamous 2004 Republican presidential campaign television ad showing John Kerry wind-surfing, and tacking from one direction to another. At first glance, this seems irrational: one would think it a virtue for a politician to flexibly respond to public opinion once in office. This logic is illustrated by John Maynard Keynes’ famous quote:

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