A model of political information processing drawn from the studies of political behavior and psychology is applied to the emergence of cooperation observed in classic repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game experiments. The results show that the model can robustly account for the learning of cooperation observed in the experiments when players are aware of the strategic nature of the game and make choices over immediate actions. In effect, basic psychological learning mechanisms, well-established in political behavior and psychology research, together tend to lead players to learn to cooperate over time under quite general conditions. In particular, the evaluative affect players develop towards choice objects and a belief learning that weighs an actually obtained outcome more than a forgone outcome play a central role in these processes.
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