IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lec/leecon/08-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Homo Sapiens Sapiens Meets Homo Strategicus at the Laboratory

Author

Listed:
  • Ludovic Renou
  • Ralph C. Bayer

Abstract

Homo Strategicus populates the vast plains of Game Theory. He knows all logical implications of his knowledge (logical omniscience) and chooses optimal strategies given his knowledge and beliefs (rationality). This paper investigates the extent to which the logical capabilities of Homo Sapiens Sapiens resemble those possessed by Homo Strategicus. Controlling for other-regarding preferences and beliefs about the rationality of others, we show, in the laboratory, that the ability of Homo Sapiens Sapiens to perform complex chains of iterative reasoning is much better than previously thought. Subjects were able to perform about two to three iterations of reasoning on average.

Suggested Citation

  • Ludovic Renou & Ralph C. Bayer, 2008. "Homo Sapiens Sapiens Meets Homo Strategicus at the Laboratory," Discussion Papers in Economics 08/16, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester, revised Nov 2008.
  • Handle: RePEc:lec:leecon:08/16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.le.ac.uk/economics/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/dp08-16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    2. Ralph-C. Bayer & Mickey Chan, 2007. "The Dirty Faces Game Revisited," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2007-01, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    3. Battigalli, Pierpaolo & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2009. "Dynamic psychological games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 1-35, January.
    4. 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.
    5. Adam Brandenburger & Amanda Friedenberg & H. Jerome Keisler, 2014. "Admissibility in Games," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Language of Game Theory Putting Epistemics into the Mathematics of Games, chapter 7, pages 161-212, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Nagel, Rosemarie, 1995. "Unraveling in Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1313-1326, December.
    7. 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.
    8. Barton L. Lipman, 1999. "Decision Theory without Logical Omniscience: Toward an Axiomatic Framework for Bounded Rationality," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(2), pages 339-361.
    9. Kahneman, Daniel & Tversky, Amos, 1979. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 263-291, March.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.
    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. Renou, Ludovic & Schlag, Karl H., 2010. "Minimax regret and strategic uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 264-286, January.
    2. Bayer, Ralph-C., 2010. "Intertemporal price discrimination and competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 273-293, February.

    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. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Choo, Lawrence, 2016. "Market competition for decision rights: An experiment based on the “Hat Puzzle Problem”," MPRA Paper 73408, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. 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.
    6. Sheen S. Levine & Mark Bernard & Rosemarie Nagel, 2018. "Strategic intelligence: The cognitive capability to anticipate competitor behaviour," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 527-527, February.
    7. Andreas Tutić & Sascha Grehl, 2017. "A Note on Disbelief in Others regarding Backward Induction," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-7, August.
    8. David Gill & Victoria Prowse, 2016. "Cognitive Ability, Character Skills, and Learning to Play Equilibrium: A Level-k Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(6), pages 1619-1676.
    9. 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.
    10. Beck, Adrian & Kerschbamer, Rudolf & Qiu, Jianying & Sutter, Matthias, 2013. "Shaping beliefs in experimental markets for expert services: Guilt aversion and the impact of promises and money-burning options," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 145-164.
    11. Morone, A. & Morone, P. & Germani, A.R., 2014. "Individual and group behaviour in the traveler's dilemma: An experimental study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-7.
    12. Benito Arruñada & Marcos Casarin & Francesca Pancotto, 2012. "Are Self-regarding Subjects More Rational?," Working Papers 611, Barcelona School of Economics.
    13. Lahno, Amrei M. & Serra-Garcia, Marta, 2012. "Peer Effects in Risk Taking," Discussion Papers in Economics 14309, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    14. Quement, Mark T. Le & Marcin, Isabel, 2020. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 449-468.
    15. Allain, Marie-Laure & Chambolle, Claire & Rey, Patrick & Teyssier, Sabrina, 2021. "Vertical integration as a source of hold-up: An experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    16. Füllbrunn, Sascha & Luhan, Wolfgang J., 2015. "Am I my Peer's Keeper? Social Responsibility in Financial Decision Making," Ruhr Economic Papers 551, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    17. Attanasi, Giuseppe & Rimbaud, Claire & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2019. "Embezzlement and guilt aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 409-429.
    18. Baethge, Caroline, 2016. "Performance in the beauty contest: How strategic discussion enhances team reasoning," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Betriebswirtschaftliche Reihe B-17-16, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    19. Khalmetski, Kiryl & Ockenfels, Axel & Werner, Peter, 2015. "Surprising gifts: Theory and laboratory evidence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 163-208.
    20. Dickinson, David L. & Masclet, David & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2015. "Norm enforcement in social dilemmas: An experiment with police commissioners," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 74-85.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    iterative reasoning; depth of reasoning; logical omniscience; rationality; experiments; other-regarding preferences;
    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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:lec:leecon:08/16. 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: Abbie Sleath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deleiuk.html .

    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.