Rock Paper Scissors Research Library

This library favors primary publisher and DOI links. It separates human hand-game research from biological systems that use an RPS-like non-transitive model, and it records limitations that are often lost when a study becomes a strategy tip.

Wang, Z., Xu, B., & Zhou, H.-J. (2014). Social cycling and conditional responses in the Rock-Paper-Scissors game. Scientific Reports, 4, 5830.

What it tested: Whether repeated RPS play under random pair matching follows fully independent mixed-strategy behavior or shows population cycling and conditional responses.
Sample or system: 360 Zhejiang University students in 60 six-person groups, scheduled for 300 rounds each. One group was excluded from the reported action-frequency analysis, leaving 354 players there.
Finding: The experiment found population-level cycling and action-to-action dependence consistent with conditional response behavior, even though aggregate gesture frequencies were close to the one-third equilibrium.
Limitations: A laboratory student sample, payoff design, repeated opponents, and group protocol do not establish one universal rule for every casual or tournament opponent.

Batzilis, D., Jaffe, S., Levitt, S., List, J. A., & Picel, J. (2019). Behavior in Strategic Settings: Evidence from a Million Rock-Paper-Scissors Games. Games, 10(2), 18.

What it tested: How players use visible opponent history in a large online strategic setting and whether experience changes exploitation of that information.
Sample or system: The published analysis reports 334,661 players from an online RPS application and roughly one million games.
Finding: Players departed from independent randomization, used opponent history, and more experienced players exploited observable behavior more effectively.
Limitations: Application rules, interface cues, self-selection, and online behavior may not generalize directly to simultaneous in-person tournament play.

Cook, R., Bird, G., Lünser, G., Huck, S., & Heyes, C. (2011). Automatic imitation in a strategic context: players of rock-paper-scissors imitate opponents’ gestures. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 279, 780–786.

What it tested: Whether seeing an opponent’s developing gesture increases draws through automatic imitation.
Sample or system: A controlled sighted-versus-blindfolded RPS experiment; consult the paper for condition-level counts and analysis.
Finding: The original paper reported more draws when players could see an opponent’s gesture.
Limitations: A larger published replication and critique did not support the original conclusion. WRPSA treats the automatic-imitation claim as disputed rather than settled.
Related correction evidence: Aczel, Bago & Foldes (2012), replication and critique

Sinervo, B., & Lively, C. M. (1996). The rock-paper-scissors game and the evolution of alternative male strategies. Nature, 380, 240–243.

What it tested: Whether three side-blotched lizard mating strategies form a non-transitive cycle whose frequencies oscillate over time.
Sample or system: Field observations and parameter estimates covering six years of morph-frequency changes.
Finding: The model predicted oscillations, and the three male morph frequencies were observed to oscillate in the field.
Limitations: This is an evolutionary analogy to RPS’s non-transitive structure, not evidence about human gesture choice or tournament strategy.

Kerr, B., Riley, M. A., Feldman, M. W., & Bohannan, B. J. M. (2002). Local dispersal promotes biodiversity in a real-life game of rock-paper-scissors. Nature, 418, 171–174.

What it tested: Whether spatially localized interaction and dispersal preserve coexistence in a non-transitive three-population Escherichia coli community.
Sample or system: Controlled microbial communities compared across localized and larger-scale interaction conditions.
Finding: All three populations coexisted under localized interaction, while diversity was rapidly lost when interaction and dispersal occurred over larger spatial scales.
Limitations: The RPS framing describes ecological dominance relations. It is not a study of people playing the hand game.

Kikuchi, S., Iwata, K., Onishi, Y., et al. (2007). Prefrontal cerebral activity during a simple “rock, paper, scissors” task measured by the noninvasive near-infrared spectroscopy method. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 156(3), 199–208.

What it tested: Prefrontal oxygenation during modified “play to win” and inhibitory “play to lose” RPS tasks.
Sample or system: 15 healthy volunteers measured with near-infrared spectroscopy.
Finding: The lose task produced larger, laterally dominant prefrontal oxygenation changes than the win task.
Limitations: A small sample and modified computer-response task cannot establish broad claims about all brain regions, ordinary play, or readable physical tells.

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