Abstract
This paper investigates how different message structures impact communication strategy as well as sender and receiver behavior. Specifically, we focus on comparing communication games with messages stating an intention versus a request. Our experimental results show that when a game includes self-signaling or self-committing messages, the two message structures yield negligibly different results. However, when the messages of the game are neither self-signaling nor self-committing, we find that more subjects send messages suggesting cooperation with request than intention. Interestingly, subjects also deviate from their suggested actions more frequently with request than intention. We surmise lying aversion plays a prominent role in contributing to the differences in games where messages lack the self-committing property.
Highlights
Farrell [1] suggested that the richness of messages should play a more prominent role in game theory
Because lying cost likely plays a role in effective communication, some formats of communication where the sender states an intended action, a type, or an explicit promise may lead to better communication compared to other formats such as making a request that the other player select a specific action, a concept this experiment puts to the test
This study compares the effect of communication from two message structures: intention-signaling and request-signaling
Summary
Farrell [1] suggested that the richness of messages should play a more prominent role in game theory. When communicating with a request, the message states a sender’s suggestion of the receiver’s behavior, rather than giving a promise regarding her own intended action This subtle change of message structure might motivate intuitive reasoning to change and likely prevents lying aversion from influencing the sender’s selection of action. Using the assumption of lying aversion, Ellingsen and Östling [11] built a level-k model on communication and fully characterized its effects in various environments In their analysis, the messages state the intention of the sender. In games with little or no incentive to select the action in a message, such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, players are less likely to send messages of cooperation with intention based messaging compared to request based messaging. Messages communicated implicitly are presumably less subject to costs from lying aversion, so players in the request treatment are more likely to send a message counter to their intent
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