IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/huj/dispap/dp521.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mental Equilibrium and Rational Emotions

Author

Listed:
  • Eyal Winter
  • Ignacio Garcia-Jurado
  • Jose Mendez-Naya
  • Luciano Mendez-Naya

Abstract

We introduce emotions into an equilibrium notion. In a mental equilibrium each player "selects" an emotional state which determines the player's preferences over the outcomes of the game. These preferences typically differ from the players' material preferences. The emotional states interact to play a Nash equilibrium and in addition each player's emotional state must be a best response (with respect to material preferences) to the emotional states of the others. We discuss the concept behind the definition of mental equilibrium and show that this behavioral equilibrium notion organizes quite well the results of some of the most popular experiments in the experimental economics literature. We shall demonstrate the role of mental equilibrium in incentive mechaisms and will discuss the concept of collective emotions, which is based on the idea that players can coordinate their emotional states.

Suggested Citation

  • Eyal Winter & Ignacio Garcia-Jurado & Jose Mendez-Naya & Luciano Mendez-Naya, 2009. "Mental Equilibrium and Rational Emotions," Discussion Paper Series dp521, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    • Handle: RePEc:huj:dispap:dp521
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ratio.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/publications/dp521.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eyal Winter, 2004. "Incentives and Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 764-773, June.
    2. Fehr, Ernst & Falk, Armin, 2002. "Psychological foundations of incentives," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 687-724, May.
    3. Andrea Ichino & Giovanni Maggi, 2000. "Work Environment and Individual Background: Explaining Regional Shirking Differentials in a Large Italian Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 1057-1090.
    4. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    5. Gãœth, Werner & Ockenfels, Axel, 2005. "The coevolution of morality and legal institutions: an indirect evolutionary approach," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 155-174, December.
    6. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L & Kalai, Ehud, 1991. "Observable Contracts: Strategic Delegation and Cooperation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 32(3), pages 551-559, August.
    7. Fershtman, Chaim & Kalai, Ehud, 1997. "Unobserved Delegation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(4), pages 763-774, November.
    8. Fischbacher, Urs & Gachter, Simon & Fehr, Ernst, 2001. "Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 397-404, June.
    9. Eyal Winter, 2009. "Incentive Reversal," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 133-147, August.
    10. Dekel, Eddie & Ely, Jeffrey & Yilankaya, Okan, 2004. "Evolution of Preferences," Microeconomics.ca working papers dekel-04-08-13-01-21-07, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 09 Jun 2006.
    11. McKelvey, Richard D & Palfrey, Thomas R, 1992. "An Experimental Study of the Centipede Game," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(4), pages 803-836, July.
    12. Armin Falk & Andrea Ichino, 2006. "Clean Evidence on Peer Effects," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(1), pages 39-58, January.
    13. Eyal Winter, 2006. "Optimal incentives for sequential production processes," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 376-390, June.
    14. Bester, Helmut & Sakovics, Jozsef, 2001. "Delegated bargaining and renegotiation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 459-473, August.
    15. Chaim Fershtman & Aviad Heifetz, 2006. "Read My Lips, Watch for Leaps: Preference Equilibrium and Political Instability," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(508), pages 246-265, January.
    16. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    17. Isaac, R. Mark & Walker, James M. & Williams, Arlington W., 1994. "Group size and the voluntary provision of public goods : Experimental evidence utilizing large groups," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 1-36, May.
    18. Nittai Bergman & Yaacov Z Bergman, 2000. "Ecologies of Preferences with Envy As An Antidote to Risk Aversion in Bargaining," Levine's Working Paper Archive 7561, David K. Levine.
    19. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    20. Eddie Dekel & Jeffrey C. Ely & Okan Yilankaya, 2007. "Evolution of Preferences -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 685-704.
    21. Guth, Werner & Schmittberger, Rolf & Schwarze, Bernd, 1982. "An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 367-388, December.
    22. Berg Joyce & Dickhaut John & McCabe Kevin, 1995. "Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 122-142, July.
    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. Wolpert, David H., 2010. "Why income comparison is rational," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 458-474, July.
    2. Dimitry Rtischev, 2012. "Strategic commitment to pursue a goal other than profit in a Cournot duopoly," Gakushuin Economic Papers, Gakushuin University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 49(2), pages 133-142.
    3. Wolpert David & Jamison Julian & Newth David & Harre Michael, 2011. "Strategic Choice of Preferences: the Persona Model," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-39, August.
    4. Frenkel, Sivan & Heller, Yuval & Teper, Roee, 2012. "Endowment as a blessing," MPRA Paper 39430, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 30 Apr 2012.

    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. Eyal Winter & Luciano Méndez-Naya & Ignacio García-Jurado, 2017. "Mental Equilibrium and Strategic Emotions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1302-1317, May.
    2. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    3. Manapat, Michael L. & Nowak, Martin A. & Rand, David G., 2013. "Information, irrationality, and the evolution of trust," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(S), pages 57-75.
    4. Ambrus, Attila & Pathak, Parag A., 2011. "Cooperation over finite horizons: A theory and experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 500-512.
    5. Sabrina Teyssier, 2012. "Inequity and risk aversion in sequential public good games," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 91-119, April.
    6. Bodo Sturm & Joachim Weimann, 2006. "Experiments in Environmental Economics and Some Close Relatives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 419-457, July.
    7. Falk, Armin & Fischbacher, Urs, 2006. "A theory of reciprocity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 293-315, February.
    8. Erik O. Kimbrough & Alexander Vostroknutov, 2016. "Norms Make Preferences Social," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 608-638, June.
    9. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    10. Andreoni, James & Brown, Paul M. & Vesterlund, Lise, 2002. "What Makes an Allocation Fair? Some Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-24, July.
    11. Tobias Hahn & Noël Albert, 2017. "Strong Reciprocity in Consumer Boycotts," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 145(3), pages 509-524, October.
    12. James Andreoni & William Harbaugh & Lise Vesterlund, 2003. "The Carrot or the Stick: Rewards, Punishments, and Cooperation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 893-902, June.
    13. Tóbiás, Áron, 2023. "Rational Altruism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 50-80.
    14. Leonardo Becchetti & Francesco Salustri, 2019. "The Vote with the Wallet Game: Responsible Consumerism as a Multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-22, February.
    15. Cary A. Deck, 2001. "A Test of Game-Theoretic and Behavioral Models of Play in Exchange and Insurance Environments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1546-1555, December.
    16. Fehr, Ernst & Schmidt, Klaus M., 2005. "The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism – Experimental Evidence and New Theories," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 66, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    17. Markus Pasche, 2013. "What Can be Learned from Behavioural Economics for Environmental Policy?," Jena Economics Research Papers 2013-020, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    18. Kovarik, Jaromir, 2009. "Social Preferences - Literature Survey," IKERLANAK 6416, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I.
    19. Simon Gaechter, 2014. "Human Pro-Social Motivation and the Maintenance of Social Order," CESifo Working Paper Series 4729, CESifo.
    20. Michael Kosfeld, 2022. "Book review on Michalis Drouvelis: "Social preferences: an introduction to behavioural economics and experimental research"," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(4), pages 747-751, November.

    More about this item

    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:huj:dispap:dp521. 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: Michael Simkin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crihuil.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.