Symmetric conflicts also allow for the investigation of attack and defense

: De Dreu and Gross argue that only asymmetric games allow the motives underlying defense and attack to be disentangled. However, the Prisoner's Dilemma Game Alt matrix (PDG-Alt matrix), a modified symmetric PDG, also allows these motives to be disentangled. Studies using the PDG-Alt matrix produced findings contradicting a central claim of De Dreu and Gross.