Information effects in two mixed-motive games

Abstract

The class of 2 × 2 games in which each player's payoffs are strictly ordered contains exactly 78 games. Of these 78, 12 are symmetric, that is, they “look alike” to both players. Four of these 12 games are dilemma-type games, two of which, Prisoner's Dilemma and Chicken, have been the subject of considerable experimental investigation. The remaining two games, Hero and Leader, have not been subject to experimental study. This paper reports the strategy choice behavior of pairs of naive subjects playing Hero and Leader under two information conditions, with and without knowledge of the other's payoffs. The results obtained in this study indicate that Hero is played more cooperatively than Leader where cooperative interaction is defined in terms of the frequency and distribution of Pareto outcomes between players in a pair. Also, both games are played more cooperatively when a player has knowledge of his own and the other's payoffs than when a player has knowledge only of his own payoffs.

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