Abstract
In risky and other multiattribute choices, the process of choosing is well described by random walk or drift diffusion models in which evidence is accumulated over time to threshold. In strategic choices, level‐k and cognitive hierarchy models have been offered as accounts of the choice process, in which people simulate the choice processes of their opponents or partners. We recorded the eye movements in 2 × 2 symmetric games including dominance‐solvable games like prisoner's dilemma and asymmetric coordination games like stag hunt and hawk–dove. The evidence was most consistent with the accumulation of payoff differences over time: we found longer duration choices with more fixations when payoffs differences were more finely balanced, an emerging bias to gaze more at the payoffs for the action ultimately chosen, and that a simple count of transitions between payoffs—whether or not the comparison is strategically informative—was strongly associated with the final choice. The accumulator models do account for these strategic choice process measures, but the level‐k and cognitive hierarchy models do not. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Highlights
When we make decisions, the outcomes that we receive often depend on our own choices and on the choices of others
In the literature on risky and multiattribute choices, drift diffusion models have been developed. Evidence accumulates until it hits a threshold and a choice is made. We consider this family of models as an alternative to the level-k-type models, using eye movement data recorded during strategic choices to help discriminate between these accounts
We find that while the level-k and cognitive hierarchy models can account for the choice data well, they fail to accommodate many of the choice time and eye movement process measures
Summary
The outcomes that we receive often depend on our own choices and on the choices of others. The related cognitive hierarchy and level-k theories are perhaps the best developed accounts of reasoning in strategic decisions. In these models, people choose by best responding to their simulation of the reasoning of others. We find that while the level-k and cognitive hierarchy models can account for the choice data well, they fail to accommodate many of the choice time and eye movement process measures. These models make predictions about the cognitive processing involved in strategic decision making, and experimental economists and psychologists have begun to test these predictions using process-tracing methods like eye tracking or Mouselab (where participants must hover the mouse over information to reveal it).
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