Feature-Based Choice and Similarity Perception in Normal-Form Games: An Experimental Study

Sibilla Di Guida and Giovanna Devetag
Additional contact information
Sibilla Di Guida: Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue Roosevelt 50 CP 114, Bruxelles 1050, Belgium

Games, 2013, vol. 4, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: In this paper, we claim that agents confronting with new interactive situations apply behavioral heuristics that drastically reduce the problem complexity either by neglecting the other players’ incentives, or by restricting attention to subsets of “salient” outcomes. We postulate that these heuristics are sensitive to the manipulation of those features that can be modified without altering the (Nash) equilibrium structure of the game. We call these features “descriptive”. We test experimentally the effect of these descriptive features on both choice behavior and cross-game similarity perception. Analysis of individual choices confirms our hypotheses, and suggests that non-equilibrium choices may derive from simplified mental models of the game structure, rather than from heterogeneous beliefs or limited iterative thinking. In addition, subjects tend to behave similarly in games sharing similar descriptive features, regardless of their strategic structure.

Keywords: cross-game similarity; categorization; focal point; behavioral heuristic; individual behavior; one-shot game; response time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/4/4/776/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/4/4/776/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jgames:v:4:y:2013:i:4:p:776-794:d:31486

Access Statistics for this article

Games is currently edited by Ms. Susie Huang

More articles in Games from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().