Attention in games: An experimental study

Avoyan, Ala; Schotter, Andrew

doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103410

Cited by 29 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…It thus seems that the negative effect of variation in own payoffs is mainly driven by subjects trying to avoid the worst possible payoff, even if this means deviating from the optimal strategy. This result bears some resemblance with recent evidence by Avoyan and Schotter (2020), who study allocation of attention in experimental games. In line with our results, they find that when presented with a pair of games, subjects pay more attention to the game with the greatest minimum payoff, although in their case the game with the largest maximum payoff also receives increased attention.…”

Section: Tablesupporting

confidence: 87%

Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games

et al. 2021

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We examine strategic sophistication using eight two-person 3 × 3 one-shot games. To facilitate strategic thinking, we design a ‘structured’ environment where subjects first assign subjective values to the payoff pairs and state their beliefs about their counterparts’ probable strategies, before selecting their own strategies in light of those deliberations. Our results show that a majority of strategy choices are inconsistent with the equilibrium prediction, and that only just over half of strategy choices constitute best responses to subjects’ stated beliefs. Allowing for other-regarding considerations increases best responding significantly, but the increase is rather small. We further compare patterns of strategies with those made in an ‘unstructured’ environment in which subjects are not specifically directed to think strategically. Our data suggest that structuring the pre-decision deliberation process does not affect strategic sophistication.

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Section: Tablesupporting

confidence: 87%

Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games

et al. 2021

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“…Further, a growing number of contributions uses eye-tracking to examine decision making in games (Knoepfle et al, 2009;Polonio et al, 2015;Devetag et al, 2016;Polonio and Coricelli 2019;Fiedler and Hillenbrand 2020;Marchiori et al, 2021;Zonca et al, 2019). This category also includes Hausfeld et al (2021), who gave their subjects eye-tracking information about another player that they competed against or cooperated with to analyze how subjects used that information, and Avoyan et al (2021), who used eye-tracking to analyze how participants plan to allocate attention in a matrix-game setting introduced in Avoyan and Schotter (2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention and salience in preference reversals

Alós–Ferrer

Ritschel

2022

Exp Econ

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We investigate the implications of Salience Theory for the classical preference reversal phenomenon, where monetary valuations contradict risky choices. It has been stated that one factor behind reversals is that monetary valuations of lotteries are inflated when elicited in isolation, and that they should be reduced if an alternative lottery is present and draws attention. We conducted two preregistered experiments, an online choice study ($$N=256$$ N = 256 ) and an eye-tracking study ($$N=64$$ N = 64 ), in which we investigated salience and attention in preference reversals, manipulating salience through the presence or absence of an alternative lottery during evaluations. We find that the alternative lottery draws attention, and that fixations on that lottery influence the evaluation of the target lottery as predicted by Salience Theory. The effect, however, is of a modest magnitude and fails to translate into an effect on preference reversal rates in either experiment. We also use transitions (eye movements) across outcomes of different lotteries to study attention on the states of the world underlying Salience Theory, but we find no evidence that larger salience results in more transitions.

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“…Conditional on a false report the average deviation from the prior is 0.167, and our results 10 While Offerman et al (2009) use the elicitation of induced priors for ex post corrections, we use it to assess the elicitation procedure itself, see also Hao and Houser (2012) and Holt and Smith (2016). The simplistic elicitation eliminates belief formation and may help participants focus on the incentives provided (see for example, Avoyan and Schotter, 2020 are the same when we exclude small mistakes from consideration. 12 Further, false reports tend to be conservative with a pull-to-center effect.…”

Section: Information Treatment Resultsmentioning

confidence: 60%