Experimental evidence on players' models of other players

Stahl, Dale O.; Wilson, Paul W.

doi:10.1016/0167-2681(94)90103-1

Cited by 565 publications

(315 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Lookahead search is also related to the sequential thinking framework in game theory [53,74]. However, compared to these works and the research carried out by the two schools above, our focus is more theoretical and less experimental and psychological.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 95%

A Theoretical Examination of Practical Game Playing: Lookahead Search

Mirrokni

Thain

Vetta

2012

Algorithmic Game Theory

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Abstract. Lookahead search is perhaps the most natural and widely used game playing strategy. Given the practical importance of the method, the aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical performance examination of lookahead search in a wide variety of applications.To determine a strategy play using lookahead search, each agent predicts multiple levels of possible re-actions to her move (via the use of a search tree), and then chooses the play that optimizes her future payoff accounting for these re-actions. There are several choices of optimization function the agents can choose, where the most appropriate choice of function will depend on the specifics of the actual game -we illustrate this in our examples. Furthermore, the type of search tree chosen by computationally-constrained agent can vary. We focus on the case where agents can evaluate only a bounded number, k, of moves into the future. That is, we use depth k search trees and call this approach k-lookahead search.We apply our method in five well-known settings: industrial organization (Cournot's model); AdWord auctions; congestion games; valid-utility games and basic-utility games; cost-sharing network design games. We consider two questions. First, what is the expected social quality of outcome when agents apply lookahead search? Second, what interactive behaviours can be exhibited when players use lookahead search?Myopic game playing (whose corresponding equilibria are Nash equilibria), where each player can only foresee the immediate effect of her own actions, is the special case of 1-lookahead search. Thus, for the first question, it is natural to ask whether social outcomes improve when players use more foresight than in myopic behaviour. The answer depends on the game played: (i) For the Cournot game, applying 2-lookahead leads to a 12.5% increase in output and a 5.5% increase in social surplus compared with myopic competition. Similar bounds arise as the length k of foresight increases.(ii) In AdWord auctions (or generalized second-price auctions), we show that 2-lookahead game playing results in outcomes that are always optimal to within a constant factor; in contrast, myopic game play can produce arbitrarily poor equilibrium outcomes.(ii) For congestion games, as with myopic game playing, lookahead search leads to constant factor qualitative guarantees. (iv) For basic-utility games, on the other hand, whilst myopic game playing always leads to constant factor approximations, additional foresight can lead to arbitrarily bad solutions! (v) In a simple Shapley network design game, qualitative guarantees improve with the length of foresight. Regarding the second question, a variety of interesting game playing characteristics also arise with lookahead search. Stackelberg leader-follower behaviours can be induced when the players have asymmetric computational power. For example, Stackelberg equilibria can be produced in the Cournot game. Lookahead search can also generate "uncoordinated" cooperative behaviour!

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Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 95%

A Theoretical Examination of Practical Game Playing: Lookahead Search

Mirrokni

Thain

Vetta

2012

Algorithmic Game Theory

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“…However, the uninformed decision maker may have had different expectations. Multi-level reasoning has been reported for many economic games (Stahl and Wilson, 1994;Nagel, 1995;Camerer et al, 2004). It is important to recognize that in the present game, this way of reasoning implied, first, a belief in a negative alignment, and second, a belief in a strategic, self-interested advisor.…”

Section: Positive Alignmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Truth and trust in communication: Experiments on the effect of a competitive context

Rode

2010

Games and Economic Behavior

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The paper employs laboratory experimentation to study the effect of competition on truth telling and trust in communication. A sequence of either competitive or cooperative interactions preceded an experimental communication game. In the game, informed advisors sent a recommendation to decision-makers who faced uncertainty about the consequences of their choice.While many advisors told the truth against their monetary self-interest, the propensity to tell the truth was unaffected by the contextual priming. In contrast, decision-makers trusted significantly less in a competitive context. The effect was strongest when they faced full uncertainty. The paper relates this result to psychological and neuro-economic findings on automatic information processing. The data of this study were largely in line with Subjective Equilibrium Analysis (Kalai and Lehrer, 1995).

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“…Some methods developed to this end are based on the idea that humans have bounded rationality and/or can make mistakes in computations 3 [4], [9], [20], [25]; others explain cooperation in terms of evolution [1], [3], [10], [19], [21], [22], [23], [29]. Finally, much of work has been directed towards defining profoundly different solution concepts [24], [26], especially in the recent algorithmic game theory and artificial intelligence communities [2], [8], [15], [16], [18], [27], [30].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cooperative Equilibria in Iterated Social Dilemmas

Capraro

Venanzi

Polukarov

et al. 2013

Algorithmic Game Theory

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Abstract. The implausibility of the extreme rationality assumptions of Nash equilibrium has been attested by numerous experimental studies with human players. In particular, the fundamental social dilemmas such as the Traveler's dilemma, the Prisoner's dilemma, and the Public Goods game demonstrate high rates of deviation from the unique Nash equilibrium, dependent on the game parameters or the environment in which the game is played. These results inspired several attempts to develop suitable solution concepts to more accurately explain human behaviour. In this line, the recently proposed notion of cooperative equilibrium, [5], [6], based on the idea that players have a natural attitude to cooperation, has shown promising results for single-shot games. In this paper, we extend this approach to iterated settings. Specifically, we define the Iterated Cooperative Equilibrium (ICE) and show it makes statistically precise predictions of population average behaviour in the aforementioned domains. Importantly, the definition of ICE does not involve any free parameters, and so it is fully predictive.

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Experimental evidence on players' models of other players

Cited by 565 publications

References 15 publications

A Theoretical Examination of Practical Game Playing: Lookahead Search

A Theoretical Examination of Practical Game Playing: Lookahead Search

Truth and trust in communication: Experiments on the effect of a competitive context

Cooperative Equilibria in Iterated Social Dilemmas

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