By receiving opinions from public, we integrated, into our project, a prisoner’s dilemma game played by the high school and undergraduate students, who are people outside of iGEM, to investigate the stereotype of concerns about gene modification. Since we received opinions from the public who concerned the sustainability, safety, and security of gene modification, we designed and executed the prisoner’s dilemma game played by the public.

As shown in Fig. 6-1-1., in total, we have
2 (Condition A) × 2 (Condition B) = 4 types of payoff matrix. In Condition A, there either is a dilemma, or no dilemma. In Condition B, there either is a story about GMO, or is no story about GMO.In the games in which we incorporated the conception of GMO into the story (Group 3 and 4), we wrote the sum of the cost and benefit by using GMO, as the score in each cell. If the games in which there is no dilemma (or in other words the Nash equilibrium matches with the Pareto efficient) (Group 2), are played to simply compete the scores, choosing the bottom right option would be rational.We designed this game, so that when we combine this same payoff matrix with the story of GMO, using GMO will lead to high scores.

Fig. 6-1-1. Our payoff matrix

Through execution of the games, we found that the public chose the option, in which we predicted is affected by the stereotype that “GMO is dangerous.” When we compared the options of the participants by each payoff matrix (FigureXA’s XX and XX), despite the fact whether there is a dilemma or not, there were more people choosing the option of not using GMO. From this result, there is a possible interpretation that the public has concerns for sustainability, safety, and security of gene modification, which were not shown in the payoff matrix. To precisely examine further on this interpretation, we would like to increase the subjects playing the prisoner’s dilemma game.

Fig.3-7-4-1.