Abstract
Theories of decision-making are routinely based on the notion that decision-makers choose alternatives which align with their underlying preferences—and hence that their preferences can be inferred from their choices. In some situations, however, a decision-maker may wish to hide his or her preferences from an onlooker. This paper argues that such obfuscation-based choice behavior is likely to be relevant in various situations, such as political decision-making. This paper puts forward a simple and tractable discrete choice model of obfuscation-based choice behavior, by combining the well-known concepts of Bayesian inference and information entropy. After deriving the model and illustrating some key properties, the paper presents the results of an obfuscation game that was designed to explore whether decision-makers, when properly incentivized, would be able to obfuscate effectively, and which heuristics they employ to do so. Together, the analyses presented in this paper provide stepping stones towards a more profound understanding of obfuscation-based decision-making.
Highlights
Models of rational decision-making are routinely based on the notion that agents base their choices on their latent, underlying preferences—and/or their goals, motivations, desires, needs2; see prominent examples from the fields of social psychology (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1977; Ajzen, 1991), behavioral decision theory (Edwards, 1954; Einhorn and Hogarth, 1981), mathematical psychology (Tversky, 1972; Swait and Marley, 2013), microeconomics (Samuelson, 1948; Houthakker, 1950; Sen, 1971), microeconometrics (McFadden, 2001; Walker and Ben-Akiva, 2002; Arentze and Timmermans, 2009; Marley and Swait, 2017), the decision sciences (Bell et al, 1988; Keeney and Raiffa, 1993), and artificial intelligence (Georgeff et al, 1998; Zurek, 2017)
Four appendices are provided, which give important background information: Appendix A elaborates a number of decision-making contexts in which obfuscation is likely to be a preferred strategy for the decision-maker; Appendix B explores, using Monte Carlo analyses, the econometric identification of parameters in the obfuscation model; Appendix C presents the instructions as these were provided to participants to the obfuscation game, and Appendix D presents the choice tasks that were used in the game
After discussing and illustrating the workings of the model, and elaborating how it can be framed in the tradition of cognitive hierarchy games (Camerer et al, 2004), we present the results of an obfuscation game that is developed in the tradition of experimental economics
Summary
Models of rational decision-making are routinely based on the notion that agents base their choices on their latent, underlying preferences—and/or their goals, motivations, desires, needs; see prominent examples from the fields of social psychology (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1977; Ajzen, 1991), behavioral decision theory (Edwards, 1954; Einhorn and Hogarth, 1981), mathematical psychology (Tversky, 1972; Swait and Marley, 2013), microeconomics (Samuelson, 1948; Houthakker, 1950; Sen, 1971), microeconometrics (McFadden, 2001; Walker and Ben-Akiva, 2002; Arentze and Timmermans, 2009; Marley and Swait, 2017), the decision sciences (Bell et al, 1988; Keeney and Raiffa, 1993), and artificial intelligence (Georgeff et al, 1998; Zurek, 2017). The notion of obfuscation-based decision-making is conceptually related to principal–agent interaction and mechanism design (Hurwicz, 1973), strategic ambiguity in political decisionmaking (Page, 1976; Kono, 2006), truth serums (Prelec, 2004), incentive compatibility (Carson and Groves, 2007), preferencefalsification (Frank, 1996; Kuran, 1997), deception by artificial agents (Castelfranchi, 2000), privacy protection (Brunton et al, 2017) and covert signaling (Smaldino et al, 2018) Despite this abundance of related work, this – to the best of the authors’ knowledge – is the first paper to provide a model of the decision-making behavior of an agent that wishes to hide from an onlooker the latent underlying preferences that govern his choices. Four appendices are provided, which give important background information: Appendix A elaborates a number of decision-making contexts in which obfuscation is likely to be a preferred strategy for the decision-maker (flirtation in a bar, moral dilemmas, nuclear proliferation); Appendix B explores, using Monte Carlo analyses, the econometric identification of parameters in the obfuscation model; Appendix C presents the instructions as these were provided to participants to the obfuscation game, and Appendix D presents the choice tasks that were used in the game
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