Abstract
Traditional game theory assumes that if framing does not affect a game’s payoffs, it will not influence behavior. However, Rubinstein and Tversky (1993), Rubinstein, Tversky, and Heller (1996), and Rubinstein (1999) reported experiments eliciting initial responses to hide-and-seek and other types of game, in which subjects’ behavior responded systematically to non-neutral framing via decision labelings. Crawford and Iriberri (2007ab) proposed a level-k explanation of Rubinstein et al.’s results for hide-and-seek games. Heap, Rojo-Arjona, and Sugden’s (2014) criticized Crawford and Iriberri’s model on grounds of portability. This paper clarifies Heap et al.’s interpretation of their results and responds to their criticisms, suggesting a way forward.
Highlights
Traditional noncooperative game theory assumes that if the framing of a game does not affect players’ payoffs, it will not influence their behavior
In CI’s proposed model, the fatal attraction pattern stems from interactions between iterated best responses to an L0 that favors salience, and hide-and-seek’s role-asymmetric payoff structure
Rapoport and Boebel’s labeling was C-L-F-I-O, for which CI took C, F, and O to be salient because of their locations. These identifications stop short of the general theory of salience HRS seem to wish for, but they are hardly controversial, and I suspect that a general theory of salience is not possible
Summary
Traditional noncooperative game theory assumes that if the framing of a game does not affect players’ payoffs, it will not influence their behavior. The fatal attraction pattern cleanly separates traditional notions based on fixed points from non-equilibrium notions based on iterated best responses, which to my knowledge are the only models of behavior that map hide-and-seek’s role-asymmetric structure into role-asymmetric patterns Motivated by these observations, CI (2007a,b) proposed a level-k model to explain the fatal attraction pattern and the other aspects of RTH’s results for hide-and-seek games.. CI’s level-k model, estimated using RTH’s data for their six hide-and-seek games with abstract action labels, tracks the main patterns in RTH’s results for those games, including the fatal attraction pattern. HRS show that no level-k model that satisfies their assumptions about portability can explain their results They criticize other aspects of CI’s analysis, and question the existence of the fatal attraction pattern.
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