Chimpanzee choice rates in competitive games match equilibrium game theory predictions

Martin, Christopher F.; Bhui, Rahul; Bossaerts, Peter; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro; Camerer, Colin F.

doi:10.1038/srep05182

Cited by 72 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This is the consensus of laboratory and field tests of the repeated play of fixed pairs from populations such as college students (O'Neill, 1987;Rosenthal et al, 2003), professional athletes (Walker and Wooders, 2001; Levitt et al, 2010), experienced poker players (Van Essen and Wooders, 2013), human teams (Okano, 2013), people with schizophrenia (Baek et al, 2013), and primates (Martin et al, 2014). We replicate the O'Neill and Rosenthal et al (hereafter, RSW) studies using students from a middle school in China.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Adolescents, cognitive ability, and minimax play

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract: We conduct experiments with adolescent participants on repeated fixed play in three different zero-sum games which have mixed strategy minimax solutions. Further, we collect subject information on cognitive abilities and participation rates in competitive activities. We find the adolescents' correspondences with and deviations from minimax play largely consistent with previously and widely studied adult populations. Further, we find strategic sophistication in terms of implementation of the mixed minimax strategy as well as earnings are not correlated with cognitive ability nor experience in competitive situations.

show abstract

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Adolescents, cognitive ability, and minimax play

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Of course, we cannot tell whether the monkeys understood this as an anti‐matching strategy, but this tendency to anti‐match is interesting for several reasons. First, it is the reverse of the (matching) strategy used in the AG, but presumably uses similar cognitive mechanisms (although anti‐matching may be cognitively more challenging than matching, as evidenced by longer reaction times in chimpanzees in a matching pennies game; Martin, Bhui, Bossaerts, Matsuzawa, & Camerer, ). Nonetheless, it does require a switch in strategy from the AG (i.e., from “play what the partner plays” to “play opposite what the partner plays”) and, therefore, is evidence that the capuchins were not just blindly following the same strategy but were adapting to the changing dynamics of different decision scenarios.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capuchin monkeys (Sapajus[Cebus]apella) play Nash equilibria in dynamic games, but their decisions are likely not influenced by oxytocin

Smith

Leverett

Wilson

et al. 2019

American J Primatol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Comparative approaches to experimental economics have shed light on the evolution of social decision-making across a range of primate species, including humans. Here we replicate our previous work looking at six pairs of capuchin monkeys' (Sapajus [Cebus] apella) responses to scenarios requiring both coordination (Assurance Game) and anticoordination (Hawk-Dove Game). This then provides a foundation for assessing their responses to two additional games, one with a scenario of beneficial cooperation with a temptation to defect (Prisoner's Dilemma) and one with an environment requiring changing strategies within short temporal proximity (Alternating Economic Game). We additionally explored the effects of exogenous oxytocin on decision-making. Oxytocin did not affect decisions in any of our games. Results from the first two games largely replicated our previous findings. Responses to the Prisoner's Dilemma were more varied than was seen in previous games, with pairs respectively cooperating, defecting, and failing to establish stable strategies. Such variability indicates that this game may be a good assay for individual differences in social decision-making. Finally, capuchins were able to flexibly switch between their previously established strategies within each of the different games, even when the games were presented within the same session, requiring strategy adjustments within short temporal proximity. These results build on earlier findings showing that capuchins can alter decision-making strategies as the context demands, which is likely essential for decision-making in naturally occurring contexts.

show abstract

“…At the same time, if we do not assume a common prior, the profile (L, B) is consistent with common knowledge of 18 In a recent article, Martin et al (2014) study chimpanzee behavior in matching pennies games and compare it with human behavior. They suggest that the chimpanzees' choices are closer to Nash equilibrium than humans', by calculating standard deviations of observed choices from the Nash prediction.…”

Section: On P As An Empirical Measure Of Rationalitymentioning

confidence: 61%

Bounded rationality and correlated equilibria

Germano

Zuazo-Garin

2016

Int J Game Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We study an interactive framework that explicitly allows for nonrational behavior. We do not place any restrictions on how players' behavior deviates from rationality. Instead we assume that there exists a probability p such that all players play rationally with at least probability p, and all players believe, with at least probability p, that their opponents play rationally. This, together with the assumption of a common prior, leads to what we call the set of p-rational outcomes, which we define and characterize for arbitrary probability p. We then show that this set varies continuously in p and converges to the set of correlated equilibria as p approaches 1, thus establishing robustness of the correlated equilibrium concept to relaxing rationality and common knowledge of rationality. The p-rational outcomes are easy to compute, also for games of incomplete information, and they can be applied to observed frequencies of play to derive a measure p that bounds from below the probability with which any given player chooses actions consistent with payoff maximization and common knowledge of payoff maximization.Keywords: strategic interaction, correlated equilibrium, robustness to bounded rationality, approximate knowledge, incomplete information, measure of rationality, experiments. JEL Classification: C72, D82, D83.

show abstract

Chimpanzee choice rates in competitive games match equilibrium game theory predictions

Cited by 72 publications

References 31 publications

Adolescents, cognitive ability, and minimax play

Adolescents, cognitive ability, and minimax play

Capuchin monkeys (Sapajus[Cebus]apella) play Nash equilibria in dynamic games, but their decisions are likely not influenced by oxytocin

Bounded rationality and correlated equilibria

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About