Naive Strategies in Competitive Games

Rubinstein, Ariel; Tversky, Amos; Heller, Dana

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-60495-9_30

Cited by 42 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Both reasons are also well illustrated by the experimental results of Rubinstein and Tversky (1993;"RT") and Rubinstein, Tversky, and Dana Heller (1996;"RTH"); see also Rubinstein (1999;"R"). RT, RTH, and R (collectively "RTH") elicited subjects' initial responses to hide-and-seek games.…”

mentioning

confidence: 55%

Fatal Attraction: Salience, Naïveté, and Sophistication in Experimental “Hide-and-Seek” Games

Crawford

Iriberri

2007

American Economic Review

188

149

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

" Hide-and-seek" games are zero-sum two-person Game theorists have been intrigued by hideand-seek games-zero-sum two-person games in which one player wins by matching the other's decision and the other wins by mismatching-for more than 50 years (John von Neumann 1953). These games cleanly model a strategic problem that is central to many economic, political, and social settings, as well as the obvious military and security applications. Examples include entry games where entry requires a differentiated product, and blocking it requires matching the entrant's design; election campaigns in which a challenger can win only by campaigning in different areas from those of the incumbent; and fashion games in which hoi polloi wish to mimic the elite but the elite prefer to distinguish themselves.Although zero-sum two-person games are one of game theory's success stories, equilibrium analysis of hide-and-seek games is not very helpful as a guide to prediction or decision making. There seem to be two main reasons for this, both illustrated by our epigraphs: hide-and-seek games are often played without clear precedents, so equilibrium depends on strategic thinking rather than learning; but such thinking may not follow the fixed-point logic of equilibrium. A game theorist would reply to our first epigraph, "But if investigators thought that way, a meeting with government officials is precisely where a government would try to kill an opponent." Further, hide-and-seek games are usually played on naturally occurring cultural * Crawford: University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093 (e-mail: vcrawfor@ dss.ucsd.edu); Iriberri: Departament d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain (e-mail: nagore.iriberri@upf. edu). Most of Iriberri's work on this paper was completed at the University of California, San Diego. We are grateful to the National Science Foundation (Crawford), the Centro de Formación del Banco de España (Iriberri), and the Barcelona Economics Program of CREA (Iriberri) for research support; to Miguel Costa-Gomes, Victor Ferreira, Navin Kartik, Barry Nalebuff, Steven Scroggin, Ricardo Serrano-Padial, Joel Sobel, David Swinney, Mark Voorneveld, Mark Walker, Joel Watson, and three anonymous referees for helpful comments or discussions; to Dale Stahl for helpful discussions and for providing a copy of Michael Bacharach and Stahl (1997a); to Stahl and Daniel Zizzo for searching for Bacharach and Stahl (1997b); to Barry O'Neill and Amnon Rapoport (with the help of Ido Erev and Mark Walker, respectively) for providing data from their experiments; and to Ariel Rubinstein for providing a copy of Rubinstein and Amos Tversky (1993), searching for additional data, and helpful discussions. Glenn Close and Michael Douglas (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093010/) were no help at all.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 55%

Fatal Attraction: Salience, Naïveté, and Sophistication in Experimental “Hide-and-Seek” Games

Crawford

Iriberri

2007

American Economic Review

188

149

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Relaxing this assumption would have similar effects to those of introducing an error structure, except that the impact on Implications 1 and 2 would be smaller. More specifically, it has been suggested that the decision problem faced by seekers is cognitively less demanding than that faced by hiders (Rubinstein, Tversky, and Heller (1996)). Further, for each of the roles of discoordinator, hider, and seeker separately (and therefore independently of H3), the choice probability of l 1 is 1 at two of the four levels L1, L2, L3, and L4.…”

Section: Implications Of Level-k Theory For Matched Games With Odd-onmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is based on that used in a series of experiments conducted by Rubinstein and Tversky (1993), Rubinstein, Tversky, and Heller (1996), and Rubinstein (1999), which we describe collectively as the work of "RTH." We derive implications of that hypothesis for behavior in Coordination, Discoordination, and Hide and Seek games that share the same frame.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Portable Is Level-0 Behavior? A Test of Level-k Theory in Games With Non-Neutral Frames

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We test the portability of level-0 assumptions in level-k theory in an experimental investigation of behavior in Coordination, Discoordination, and Hide and Seek games with common, non-neutral frames. Assuming that level-0 behavior depends only on the frame, we derive hypotheses that are independent of prior assumptions about salience. Those hypotheses are not confirmed. Our findings contrast with previous research which has fitted parameterized level-k models to Hide and Seek data. We show that, as a criterion of successful explanation, the existence of a plausible model that replicates the main patterns in these data has a high probability of false positives.

show abstract

“…1. The closest task to a multiple-choice test was studied by Rubinstein, Tversky, and Heller (1996). Respondents were told to "hide a treasure" in one of four places laid out in a row, where others would then seek it by getting a single opportunity to observe the content of a single hiding place.…”

Section: Edge Aversionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guess Where: The Position of Correct Answers in Multiple‐Choice Test Items as a Psychometric Variable

Attali

Bar-Hillel

2003

J Educational Measurement

110

103

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, the authors show that test makers and test takers have a strong and systematic tendency for hiding correct answers—or, respectively, for seeking them—in middle positions. In single, isolated questions, both prefer middle positions to extreme ones in a ratio of up to 3 or 4 to 1. Because test makers routinely, deliberately, and excessively balance the answer key of operational tests, middle bias almost, though not quite, disappears in those keys. Examinees taking real tests also produce answer sequences that are more balanced than their single question tendencies but less balanced than the correct key. In a typical four‐choice test, about 55% of erroneous answers are in the two central positions. The authors show that this bias is large enough to have real psychometric consequences, as questions with middle correct answers are easier and less discriminating than questions with extreme correct answers, a fact of which some implications are explored.

show abstract

Naive Strategies in Competitive Games

Cited by 42 publications

References 2 publications

Fatal Attraction: Salience, Naïveté, and Sophistication in Experimental “Hide-and-Seek” Games

Fatal Attraction: Salience, Naïveté, and Sophistication in Experimental “Hide-and-Seek” Games

How Portable Is Level-0 Behavior? A Test of Level-k Theory in Games With Non-Neutral Frames

Guess Where: The Position of Correct Answers in Multiple‐Choice Test Items as a Psychometric Variable

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About