Social framing effects: Preferences or beliefs?

Ellingsen, Tore; Johannesson, Magnus; Möllerström, Johanna; Munkhammar, Sara

doi:10.1016/j.geb.2012.05.007

Cited by 227 publications

(170 citation statements)

References 73 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

148

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The most obvious difference is that the players in our model would have completely standard preferences over the domain of final game-payoff vectors (unlike altruistic or inequity-averse players). Consistent with this, when the Prisoners' Dilemma is modified to have a passive opponent (so the unconstrained player is unilaterally selecting the payoff vector), higher rates of "defection" are found (Ellingsen et al, 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 65%

A Strategic Model of Magical Thinking: Axioms and Analysis

Sadowski

Daley

2014

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper seeks to make two contributions. First, we propose and analyze a tractable model of strategic play in which players behave as if their expectations about their opponents' behavior vary with their own choices. We refer to this nonstandard updating as magical thinking. The model provides a unified view of documented behavior in a range of often-studied games, such as the Prisoners' Dilemma, the Battle of the Sexes, Hawk-Dove, and the Stag Hunt. Second, we provide axioms applied to the behavior of the collection of players in symmetric 2×2 games, and a representation theorem that establishes these axioms to be the precise behavioral content of the model. We thereby suggest a novel way to import the axiomatic methodology of individual decision theory to strategic settings and demonstrate the benefits of this approach.In the model, the degree to which players exhibit magical thinking is heterogeneous in the population and is captured by players' types. All players perceive types to be i.i.d. draws from a common distribution. We show that the model's parameters, namely these individual types and the commonly perceived distribution, can be (essentially) identified from behavior in games, allowing for tractable comparative statics. Finally, the model generates novel predictions across games. For example, the ability of a collection of players to coordinate on Pareto superior Nash equilibria in coordination games is positively correlated with their degree of cooperation in Prisoners' Dilemma games.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 65%

A Strategic Model of Magical Thinking: Axioms and Analysis

Sadowski

Daley

2014

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…All classes of theories have their limitations: prospect theory applies only to valence framing and cannot capture the changes observed in strategy selection; coordination device theories and group identity theories both apply to specific games only, although framing effects have also been observed in other games; social norms theories remain vague about the underlying mechanisms and leave open whether framing effects are experimenter demand effects. At the moment, theory-driven investigations are the exception (e.g., Ellingsen et al, 2012;Gächter et al, 2014). Clearly, more research is required to clarify the mechanisms underlying framing effects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This debate is the youngest (Ellingsen, Johannesson, Mollerstrom, & Munkhammar, 2012;Hagen & Hammerstein, 2006;Levitt & List, 2007;Weber et al, 2004) -although psychologists (Deutsch, 1957(Deutsch, , 1958(Deutsch, , 1960 and experimental economists (Hoffman & Spitzer, 1985;Hoffman, McCabe, & Smith, 1996) have long known that framing effects are not limited to either changes in valence or to coordination games. For instance, the instructions to non-cooperative games, in which players choose independently and no third party can enforce cooperation, can emphasise either the competitive nature of the situation or the possible group advantage of cooperation.…”

Section: Frames and Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, social preference theories can indirectly account for context framing effects if first-order beliefs (FOBs) are taken into account (Camerer & Fehr, 2002, footnote 6;Dreber, Ellingsen, Johannesson, & Rand, 2013;Ellingsen et al, 2012). FOBs are the player's expectations about her partner's choices.…”

Section: Coordination Device Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, they do not account for context framing effects in sequential move games (Ellingsen et al, 2012). A prominent example is the trust game that consists of two players and two stages (Berg, Dickhaut, & McCabe, 1995).…”

Section: Coordination Device Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Another frame, another game? Explaining framing effects in economic games

Gerlach¹,

Jaeger²

2016

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Small changes in the framing of games (i.e., the way in which the game situation is described to participants) can have large effects on players' choices. For example, referring to a prisoner's dilemma game as the "Community Game" as opposed to the "Wall Street Game" can double the cooperation rate (Liberman, Samuels, & Ross, 2004). Framing effects are an empirically well-studied phenomenon. However, a coherent theoretical explanation of the observed effects is still lacking. We distinguish between two types of framings - valence framing and context framing - and provide an overview of three general classes of theories that may account for the observed changes in behaviour.

show abstract

Preferences for honesty can support cooperation

Székely

Bruner

Steinmo

et al. 2023

Behavioral Decision Making

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many collective action problems are inherently linked to honesty. By deciding to behave honestly, people contribute to solving the collective action problem. We use a laboratory experiment from two sites (n = 331 and n = 319) to test whether honest preferences can drive cooperation and whether these preferences can be differentially activated by framing. Subjects participate in an asymmetric information variant of the public goods game in one of two treatments that vary only in their wording: The Contribution Frame uses a standard public good game framing, while in the Honesty Frame, words aimed to trigger honesty are used. We measure subjects' honesty in three ways using the (i) sender–receiver task, (ii) the die‐roll task, and (iii) self‐reported honesty levels and account for other‐regarding preferences and social norms to disentangle key alternative motives. We find that all three measures of honesty preferences robustly predict contributions, as do other‐regarding preferences and empirical expectations but not normative expectations. Additionally, honesty preferences predict contributions in the Honesty Frame but not in the Contribution Frame, although the difference between these is not consistently significant. Finally, we find no differences in average cooperation across the treatments.

show abstract

Social framing effects: Preferences or beliefs?

Cited by 227 publications

References 73 publications

A Strategic Model of Magical Thinking: Axioms and Analysis

A Strategic Model of Magical Thinking: Axioms and Analysis

Another frame, another game? Explaining framing effects in economic games

Preferences for honesty can support cooperation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About