A Notion of Prominence for Games with Natural-Language Labels

Alessandro Sontuoso and Sudeep Bhatia ()
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Sudeep Bhatia: Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania

Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute

Abstract: We study games with natural-language labels (i.e., strategic problems where options are denoted by words), for which we propose and test a measurable characterization of prominence. We assume that – ceteris paribus – players find particularly prominent those strategies that are denoted by words more frequently used in their everyday language. To operationalize this assumption, we suggest that the prominence of a strategy-label is correlated with its frequency of occurrence in large text corpora, such as the Google Books corpus (“n-gram†frequency). In testing for the strategic use of word frequency, we consider experimental games with different incentive structures (such as incentives to and not to coordinate), as well as subjects from different cultural/linguistic backgrounds. Our data show that frequently-mentioned labels are more (less) likely to be selected when there are incentives to match (mismatch) others. Furthermore, varying one’s knowledge of the others’ country of residence significantly affects one’s reliance on word frequency. Overall, the data show that individuals play strategies that fulfill our characterization of prominence in a (boundedly) rational manner.

Keywords: focal points; salience; coordination; hide-and-seek; culture; language; level-k (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/333/

Related works:
Journal Article: A notion of prominence for games with natural‐language labels (2021)
Working Paper: A Notion of Prominence for Games with Natural-Language Labels (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chu:wpaper:20-38

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