Testing the level of consistency between choices and beliefs in games using eye-tracking

Investigating the Failure to Best Respond in Experimental Games

“…Furthermore, the average best response rate does not change if we allow for some degree of risk aversion (see last two columns of Table 3). These data are in line with results from previous literature (e.g., Costa-Gomes and Weizsäcker, 2008;Polonio and Coricelli, 2019;Rey-Biel, 2009;Sutter et al, 2013), which report consistency levels ranging from 54% to 67%. That is, despite having their personal rankings of payoff pairs and their stated beliefs about their counterparts' strategies on display at the time they are choosing their own strategy, participants often choose options which do not maximise the expected utility of their own payoffs.…”

“…Our main results can be summarized as follows. In line with previous literature (Costa-Gomes and Weizsäcker, 2008;Danz et al, 2012;Hoffman, 2014;Polonio and Coricelli, 2019;Sutter et al, 2013) we find that a sizeable minority of players fail to best respond to their own stated beliefs. While we find that the level of consistency increases significantly when we make some allowance for otherregarding preferences as revealed by the ranking task, the observed difference is relatively small (54% vs. 57%).…”

“…The experimental game literature has produced a number of studies showing that a substantial proportion of individuals' strategy choices are not best responses, as judged according to the beliefweighted values of the available options, especially in environments where games are complex and learning opportunities are limited (e.g., see Costa-Gomes and Weizsäcker, 2008;Danz et al, 2012;Hoffman, 2014;Polonio and Coricelli, 2019;Sutter et al, 2013).…”

“…If individuals' choices are not solely driven by self-interest but involve social preferences, it should not be surprising that subjects depart from best responses calculated on the basis of own payoffs only. To date, the role of other-regarding motives in normal form games has been investigated mainly indirectly by monitoring the patterns of information acquisition using eye-or mouse-tracking and connecting the revealed search patterns to different types of other-regarding preferences (e.g., Costa-Gomes et al, 2001;Devetag et al, 2016;Polonio et al, 2015;Polonio and Coricelli, 2019). While evidence from the aforementioned literature suggests that other-regarding motives may interact with the observed levels of strategic sophistication, the correspondence between choice and process data in establishing causal links is less than perfect, since all the inferences are drawn via subjects' information search patterns.…”

“…Importantly, we do not require those estimates to conform to any particular assumptions about the rationality of reasoning of the other players; we simply ask subjects for their best judgements. Previous literature investigating the effect of belief elicitation on equilibrium play has obtained mixed results with inconclusive evidence: some studies find that belief elicitation does not affect game play (e.g., Costa-Gomes and Weizsäcker, 2008;Inavov, 2011;Nyarko and Schotter, 2002;Polonio and Coricelli, 2019), whereas others (e.g., Hoffmann, 2014) show that whether belief elicitation influences game play depends on the properties of the game (see Schlag et al, 2015 andTrevino, 2014, for reviews). In contrast to these studies, here we investigate the effect of beliefs in conjunction with stated rankings over payoffs, rather than the effect of beliefs alone.…”