 Mindshaping, conditional games, and the Harsanyi DoctrineDon Ross and Wynn C. Stirling Journal of Economic Methodology, 2025, vol. 32, issue 3, 239-264 Abstract: Much work in game theory concerns mechanisms by which players can infer information about the utilities and beliefs of other players based on actions within games and pre-play signals. When game theory is applied to interactions among people, such analysis interprets them as ‘mindreading’. Recent work in cognitive science, however, suggests that human coordination rests more centrally on ‘mindshaping’, where interactants determine preferences jointly. As mindshaping is strategic, there is motivation to extend game theory to accommodate it. Conditional Game Theory (CGT) is a strategic theory of mindshaping. We show how it can be used to help players of standard games identify correlated equilibrium, and thus solve games. We then extend CGT to address a challenge to the relevance of correlated equilibrium to empirical choice data, by showing how pre-play analysis using CGT can reconcile the Harsanyi Doctrine – assumed common priors among Bayesian players – with rank-dependent choice as observed in economic experiments. Date: 2025 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:32:y:2025:i:3:p:239-264 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2024.2413572 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Methodology is currently edited by John Davis and D Wade Hands More articles in Journal of Economic Methodology from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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