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Which Expectations to Follow: The Impact of First- and Second-Order Beliefs on Strategy Choices in a Stag Hunt Game
Many situations require coordinated actions of individuals to achieve common goals. Such situations include organizing mass protests or adjusting behavior to new behavioral recommendations that aim to slow down the spread of a contagious disease. However, there is a risk of coordination failure in s...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10045160/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36975253 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs13030228 |
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author | Neumann, Thomas Bengart, Paul Vogt, Bodo |
author_facet | Neumann, Thomas Bengart, Paul Vogt, Bodo |
author_sort | Neumann, Thomas |
collection | PubMed |
description | Many situations require coordinated actions of individuals to achieve common goals. Such situations include organizing mass protests or adjusting behavior to new behavioral recommendations that aim to slow down the spread of a contagious disease. However, there is a risk of coordination failure in such situations that can lead to a worse outcome for those who acted in a coordinated manner than for those who chose not to. In this paper, we investigate the main determinant of individuals’ decisions in these situations to determine whether beliefs regarding the action of others (empirical expectations), beliefs regarding others’ beliefs (normative expectations), or risk attitudes are dominant determinants. To this end, we conducted an experiment analyzing the relationship between an individual’s choices in a stag hunt game, their probabilistic empirical and normative expectations (i.e., first-order and second-order beliefs, respectively), and their risk attitudes. Our central finding is that expectations, not risk attitudes, explain individuals’ strategy selection. In addition, we found evidence that normative expectations are a better predictor of strategy selection than empirical expectations. This could have implications for developing more targeted strategies intended to promote new behavioral standards and to guide individuals’ behavior toward a welfare-maximizing equilibrium. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10045160 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-100451602023-03-29 Which Expectations to Follow: The Impact of First- and Second-Order Beliefs on Strategy Choices in a Stag Hunt Game Neumann, Thomas Bengart, Paul Vogt, Bodo Behav Sci (Basel) Article Many situations require coordinated actions of individuals to achieve common goals. Such situations include organizing mass protests or adjusting behavior to new behavioral recommendations that aim to slow down the spread of a contagious disease. However, there is a risk of coordination failure in such situations that can lead to a worse outcome for those who acted in a coordinated manner than for those who chose not to. In this paper, we investigate the main determinant of individuals’ decisions in these situations to determine whether beliefs regarding the action of others (empirical expectations), beliefs regarding others’ beliefs (normative expectations), or risk attitudes are dominant determinants. To this end, we conducted an experiment analyzing the relationship between an individual’s choices in a stag hunt game, their probabilistic empirical and normative expectations (i.e., first-order and second-order beliefs, respectively), and their risk attitudes. Our central finding is that expectations, not risk attitudes, explain individuals’ strategy selection. In addition, we found evidence that normative expectations are a better predictor of strategy selection than empirical expectations. This could have implications for developing more targeted strategies intended to promote new behavioral standards and to guide individuals’ behavior toward a welfare-maximizing equilibrium. MDPI 2023-03-06 /pmc/articles/PMC10045160/ /pubmed/36975253 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs13030228 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Neumann, Thomas Bengart, Paul Vogt, Bodo Which Expectations to Follow: The Impact of First- and Second-Order Beliefs on Strategy Choices in a Stag Hunt Game |
title | Which Expectations to Follow: The Impact of First- and Second-Order Beliefs on Strategy Choices in a Stag Hunt Game |
title_full | Which Expectations to Follow: The Impact of First- and Second-Order Beliefs on Strategy Choices in a Stag Hunt Game |
title_fullStr | Which Expectations to Follow: The Impact of First- and Second-Order Beliefs on Strategy Choices in a Stag Hunt Game |
title_full_unstemmed | Which Expectations to Follow: The Impact of First- and Second-Order Beliefs on Strategy Choices in a Stag Hunt Game |
title_short | Which Expectations to Follow: The Impact of First- and Second-Order Beliefs on Strategy Choices in a Stag Hunt Game |
title_sort | which expectations to follow: the impact of first- and second-order beliefs on strategy choices in a stag hunt game |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10045160/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36975253 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs13030228 |
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