A hierarchy of mindreading strategies in joint action participation

Abstract

This paper introduces the Hierarchical Mindreading Model (HMM), a new model of mindreading in two-person, mixed-motive games such as the Prisoners’ Dilemma. The HMM proposes that the strategies available to decision makers in these games can be classified on a hierarchy according to the type of mindreading involved. At Level 0 of the HMM, there is no attempt to infer the intentions of the other player from any of the context-specific information (i.e., signals, payoffs, or partner reliability). At Level 1, decision makers rely on signals to infer the other’s intention, without considering the possibility that those signals might not reflect the other’s true intention. Finally, in Level 2 strategies, decision makers infer the other player’s intended choice by integrating information contained in their signals with the apparent reliability of the other participant and/or the game’s payoffs. The implications of the HMM were tested across four studies involving 962 participants, with results consistently indicating the presence of strategies from all three levels of the HMM’s hierarchy.