Epiphany in the Game of 21

Dufwenberg, Martin; Sundaram, Ramya; Butler, David

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2010.03.025

Cited by 70 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Ohtsubo and Rapoport (2006) argue that "one of the most important uses of the theory-of-mind ability is the strategic reasoning used to outwit or manipulate others." Some games require only analytic reasoning: for example, Dufwenberg et al (2010), Gneezy et al (2010) and Cardella (2012) study how players in Race games learn their less-than-obvious dominant strategy. In contrast, the beauty contest requires both analytic reasoning and a good theory of mind.…”

Section: Opening the Black Box: How Cognition And Character Influencementioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Ability, Character Skills, and Learning to Play Equilibrium: A Level-kAnalysis

Gill

Prowse²

2016

Journal of Political Economy

215

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. In this paper we investigate how cognitive ability and character skills influence behavior, success and the evolution of play towards Nash equilibrium in repeated strategic interactions. We study behavior in a p-beauty contest experiment and find striking differences according to cognitive ability: more cognitively able subjects choose numbers closer to equilibrium, converge more frequently to equilibrium play and earn more even as behavior approaches the equilibrium prediction. To understand better how subjects with different cognitive abilities learn differently, we estimate a structural model of learning based on level-k reasoning. We find a systematic positive relationship between cognitive ability and levels; furthermore, the average level of more cognitively able subjects responds positively to the cognitive ability of their opponents, while the average level of less cognitively able subjects does not respond. Finally, we compare the influence of cognitive ability to that of character skills, and find that both cognition and personality affect behavior and learning. More agreeable and emotionally stable subjects perform better and learn faster, although the effect of cognitive ability on behavior is stronger than that of character skills.JEL Classification: C92, C73, D83

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Section: Opening the Black Box: How Cognition And Character Influencementioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Ability, Character Skills, and Learning to Play Equilibrium: A Level-kAnalysis

Gill

Prowse²

2016

Journal of Political Economy

215

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“…To overcome the aforementioned interpretation problems, we employ the race game, which has recently come into focus of economists (see, e.g., Burks et al, 2009, Dufwenberg et al, 2010, Gneezy et al, 2010, and Levitt et al, 2011. The race game is a two-player constant-sum game with complete and perfect information that has a dominant strategy, which can be found by backward induction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does truth win when teams reason strategically?

2014

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“…The basic game described here is quite flexible in accommodating slight changes in the rules of the game (see Dixit 2005, Gneezy, Rustichini and Vostroknutov 2009, Dufwenberg, Sundaram and Butler 2010. One exciting demonstration of the game is found in a popular reality show called Survivor (Dixit 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…He suggested repetitive play of the above game can help the instructor to successfully initiate the discussion of the backwardinduction technique. Results from a recent experiment by Dufwenberg, Sundaram and Butler (2010) suggest that one can go even further in nudging students towards the logic of backward induction. Dufwenberg et al (2010) introduced students successively to two games, the full game of 21 and a reduced version, with only 6 numbers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Results from a recent experiment by Dufwenberg, Sundaram and Butler (2010) suggest that one can go even further in nudging students towards the logic of backward induction. Dufwenberg et al (2010) introduced students successively to two games, the full game of 21 and a reduced version, with only 6 numbers. The experiments were run in search of evidence for two types of epiphany (as defined by the authors).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nudging Students Forward Towards Backward Induction

Dasgupta¹

2011

Journal of Industrial Organization Education

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This paper uses variations in a popular parlor game to provide useful instructional benefits. The paper builds a classroom activity to nudge students towards thinking in a backward-inductive manner. The pedagogic innovation is in introducing the game repeatedly with progressively smaller action spaces in every repetition. As the numbers of available actions become smaller and smaller in the reduced games, students stumble on to the backwardly inductive winning strategy. The described procedures are also useful in laying down the intuitive foundations of the concepts of dominant strategies, and first-and second-mover advantages.

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Epiphany in the Game of 21

Cited by 70 publications

References 26 publications

Cognitive Ability, Character Skills, and Learning to Play Equilibrium: A Level-kAnalysis

Cognitive Ability, Character Skills, and Learning to Play Equilibrium: A Level-kAnalysis

Does truth win when teams reason strategically?

Nudging Students Forward Towards Backward Induction

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