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.