IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v56y2016icp39-59.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Logical abilities and behavior in strategic-form games

Author

Listed:
  • Bayer, R.-C.
  • Renou, Ludovic

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of cognitive abilities and preferences on behavior in games. We first measure subjects’ logical abilities and social preferences and then evaluate their influence on behavior in strategic-form games. For this purpose, we estimate how logical abilities and preferences relate to the probability of a subject being of a specific behavioral type. We find that better logical abilities increase the likelihood of sophisticated behavior. This shift is stronger for subjects who are classified as “selfish”. However, not even the most logically able, selfish subjects are identified as Nash types.

Suggested Citation

  • Bayer, R.-C. & Renou, Ludovic, 2016. "Logical abilities and behavior in strategic-form games," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 39-59.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:56:y:2016:i:c:p:39-59
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2016.05.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487016302884
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2016.05.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    2. Stahl Dale O. & Wilson Paul W., 1995. "On Players' Models of Other Players: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 218-254, July.
    3. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & García-Muñoz, Teresa & González, Roberto Hernán, 2012. "Cognitive effort in the Beauty Contest Game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 254-260.
    4. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    5. Vincent P. Crawford & Miguel A. Costa-Gomes, 2006. "Cognition and Behavior in Two-Person Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1737-1768, December.
    6. Miguel A. Costa-Gomes & Georg Weizsäcker, 2008. "Stated Beliefs and Play in Normal-Form Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 729-762.
    7. Roberto Weber, 2001. "Behavior and Learning in the “Dirty Faces” Game," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 4(3), pages 229-242, December.
    8. Georganas, Sotiris & Healy, Paul J. & Weber, Roberto A., 2015. "On the persistence of strategic sophistication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 369-400.
    9. McKelvey, Richard D & Palfrey, Thomas R, 1992. "An Experimental Study of the Centipede Game," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(4), pages 803-836, July.
    10. Burchardi, Konrad B. & Penczynski, Stefan P., 2014. "Out of your mind: Eliciting individual reasoning in one shot games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 39-57.
    11. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    12. Goeree, Jacob K. & Holt, Charles A., 2004. "A model of noisy introspection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 365-382, February.
    13. Nagel, Rosemarie, 1995. "Unraveling in Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1313-1326, December.
    14. Ho, Teck-Hua & Camerer, Colin & Weigelt, Keith, 1998. "Iterated Dominance and Iterated Best Response in Experimental "p-Beauty Contests."," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 947-969, September.
    15. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    16. Oechssler, Jörg & Roider, Andreas & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2009. "Cognitive abilities and behavioral biases," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 147-152, October.
    17. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, December.
    18. Burnham, Terence C. & Cesarini, David & Johannesson, Magnus & Lichtenstein, Paul & Wallace, Björn, 2009. "Higher cognitive ability is associated with lower entries in a p-beauty contest," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 171-175, October.
    19. Haruvy, Ernan & Stahl, Dale O. & Wilson, Paul W., 1999. "Evidence for optimistic and pessimistic behavior in normal-form games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 255-259, June.
    20. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    21. Martin J. Osborne & Ariel Rubinstein, 1994. "A Course in Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262650401, December.
    22. Agranov, Marina & Potamites, Elizabeth & Schotter, Andrew & Tergiman, Chloe, 2012. "Beliefs and endogenous cognitive levels: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 449-463.
    23. Rey-Biel, Pedro, 2009. "Equilibrium play and best response to (stated) beliefs in normal form games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 572-585, March.
    24. T. Randolph Beard & Richard O. Beil, 1994. "Do People Rely on the Self-Interested Maximization of Others? An Experimental Test," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(2), pages 252-262, February.
    25. Dufwenberg, Martin & Sundaram, Ramya & Butler, David J., 2010. "Epiphany in the Game of 21," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 132-143, August.
    26. Costa-Gomes, Miguel & Crawford, Vincent P & Broseta, Bruno, 2001. "Cognition and Behavior in Normal-Form Games: An Experimental Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(5), pages 1193-1235, September.
    27. Susana Cabrera & C. Capra & Rosario Gómez, 2007. "Behavior in one-shot traveler’s dilemma games: model and experiments with advice," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 129-152, June.
    28. Ayala Arad & Ariel Rubinstein, 2012. "The 11-20 Money Request Game: A Level-k Reasoning Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3561-3573, December.
    29. Stahl, Dale II & Wilson, Paul W., 1994. "Experimental evidence on players' models of other players," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 309-327, December.
    30. Gneezy, Uri & Rustichini, Aldo & Vostroknutov, Alexander, 2010. "Experience and insight in the Race game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 144-155, August.
    31. repec:mpr:mprres:7497 is not listed on IDEAS
    32. Daniel J. Benjamin & Sebastian A. Brown & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2013. "Who Is ‘Behavioral’? Cognitive Ability And Anomalous Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(6), pages 1231-1255, December.
    33. Oechssler, Jörg & Roider, Andreas & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2009. "Cognitive Abilities and Behavioral Biases," Working Papers 0465, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    34. Van Huyck, John B. & Wildenthal, John M. & Battalio, Raymond C., 2002. "Tacit Cooperation, Strategic Uncertainty, and Coordination Failure: Evidence from Repeated Dominance Solvable Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 156-175, January.
    35. Colin F. Camerer & Teck-Hua Ho & Juin-Kuan Chong, 2004. "A Cognitive Hierarchy Model of Games," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 861-898.
    36. Vincent P. Crawford & Tamar Kugler & Zvika Neeman & Ady Pauzner, 2009. "Behaviorally Optimal Auction Design: Examples and Observations," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 377-387, 04-05.
    37. Kawagoe, Toshiji & Takizawa, Hirokazu, 2012. "Level-k analysis of experimental centipede games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 548-566.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maas, Victor S. & Yin, Huaxiang, 2022. "Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers’ behavior affects employee collusion," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    2. Chen Daniel L., 2019. "Law and Literature: Theory and Evidence on Empathy and Guile," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    3. Kiss, H.J. & Rodriguez-Lara, I. & Rosa-García, A., 2016. "Think twice before running! Bank runs and cognitive abilities," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 12-19.
    4. Duffy, Sean & Naddeo, JJ & Owens, David & Smith, John, 2016. "Cognitive load and mixed strategies: On brains and minimax," MPRA Paper 89720, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Choo, Lawrence & Zhou, Xiaoyu, 2019. "Can market competition reduce anomalous behaviours," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 08/2019, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    6. Marchiori, Davide & Di Guida, Sibilla & Polonio, Luca, 2021. "Plasticity of strategic sophistication in interactive decision-making," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    7. Juan M. Benito-Ostolaza & Penélope Hernández & Juan A. Sanchis-Llopis, 2015. "Are individuals with higher cognitive ability expected to play more strategically?," Working Papers 1507, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
    8. Despoina Alempaki & Andrew M. Colman & Felix Kölle & Graham Loomes & Briony D. Pulford, 2022. "Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 656-679, April.
    9. Choo, Lawrence & Zhou, Xiaoyu, 2022. "Can market selection reduce anomalous behaviour in games?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bayer, Ralph C. & Renou, Ludovic, 2016. "Logical omniscience at the laboratory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 41-49.
    2. Allred, Sarah & Duffy, Sean & Smith, John, 2016. "Cognitive load and strategic sophistication," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 162-178.
    3. Gill, David & Prowse, Victoria, 2012. "Cognitive ability and learning to play equilibrium: A level-k analysis," MPRA Paper 38317, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Apr 2012.
    4. Duffy, Sean & Smith, John, 2014. "Cognitive load in the multi-player prisoner's dilemma game: Are there brains in games?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 47-56.
    5. Dietmar Fehr & Steffen Huck, 2016. "Who knows it is a game? On strategic awareness and cognitive ability," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(4), pages 713-726, December.
    6. Le Coq, Chloé & Tremewan, James & Wagner, Alexander K., 2015. "On the effects of group identity in strategic environments," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 239-252.
    7. Wright, James R. & Leyton-Brown, Kevin, 2017. "Predicting human behavior in unrepeated, simultaneous-move games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 16-37.
    8. Ye Jin, 2021. "Does level-k behavior imply level-k thinking?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(1), pages 330-353, March.
    9. Nagel, Rosemarie & Bühren, Christoph & Frank, Björn, 2017. "Inspired and inspiring: Hervé Moulin and the discovery of the beauty contest game," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 191-207.
    10. Despoina Alempaki & Andrew M. Colman & Felix Kölle & Graham Loomes & Briony D. Pulford, 2022. "Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 656-679, April.
    11. Volker Benndorf & Dorothea Kübler & Hans-Theo Normann, 2017. "Depth of Reasoning and Information Revelation: An Experiment on the Distribution of k-Levels," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(04), pages 1-18, December.
    12. Vincent P. Crawford & Miguel A. Costa-Gomes & Nagore Iriberri, 2010. "Strategic Thinking," Levine's Working Paper Archive 661465000000001148, David K. Levine.
    13. García-Pola, Bernardo & Iriberri, Nagore & Kovářík, Jaromír, 2020. "Non-equilibrium play in centipede games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 391-433.
    14. María Cubel & Santiago Sanchez-Pages, 2014. "Gender differences and stereotypes in the beauty contest," Working Papers 2014/13, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    15. Li, Ying Xue & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2020. "Strategic reasoning in persuasion games: An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 329-367.
    16. Choo, Lawrence & Kaplan, Todd R. & Zhou, Xiaoyu, 2019. "Can auctions select people by their level-k types?," MPRA Paper 95987, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Georganas, Sotiris & Healy, Paul J. & Weber, Roberto A., 2015. "On the persistence of strategic sophistication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 369-400.
    18. Fehr, Dietmar & Huck, Steffen, 2013. "Who knows It is a game? On rule understanding, strategic awareness and cognitive ability," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2013-306, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    19. Sutter, Matthias & Czermak, Simon & Feri, Francesco, 2010. "Strategic Sophistication of Individuals and Teams in Experimental Normal-Form Games," Working Papers in Economics 430, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    20. James Tremewan & Chloé Le Coq & Alexander D. Wagner, 2013. "Social Centipedes: the Impact of Group Identity on Preferences and Reasoning," Vienna Economics Papers 1305, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Logical ability; Behaviors; Strategic-form games; Experiments; Preferences; Sophistication;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:56:y:2016:i:c:p:39-59. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.