Collaborative Research: Contingent Reasoning and Bayesian Updating in Games of Incomplete Information: An Experimental Analysis

这个项目关注的是两种认知能力，这两种认知能力可能对人们在不完全信息情况下做出战略决策时偏离理性起到关键作用。第一个是决策者以统计上正确的方式获得新信息时调整他或她的信念的能力--换句话说，执行贝叶斯更新的能力。第二种是在做出决定之前仔细考虑可能的相关情景的能力，研究人员将这种能力称为“或有推理”。这项研究使用决策实验来研究贝叶斯更新和或有推理在一系列环境中的作用；二次价格私人价值拍卖、一系列常见的价值拍卖、其他研究团队研究过的“收购一家公司”游戏的版本，以及内生的时机投资游戏。研究人员使用一项特别设计的个人选择任务，根据参与者对贝叶斯更新和或有推理的使用情况对他们进行分类。然后，这些研究对象参加一系列战略上等价的游戏，以了解市场环境中的行为如何取决于认知特征。结果适用于广泛的环境。在任何现实世界的情况下，偶然推理的要求取决于各种各样的因素。了解或有推理是如何影响决策的，将使我们能够选择这些因素，以鼓励人们为实现他们选择的目标做出可能的最佳决定。

This project focuses on two cognitive abilities that are likely to play a key role for departures from rationality when people make strategic decisions under situations of incomplete information. The first is the decision maker's ability to adjust his or her beliefs as he gets new information in a way that is statistically correct -- in other words, the ability to perform Bayesian updating. The second is the ability to carefully think through possible relevant scenarios before making a decision, an ability that the researchers term 'contingent reasoning'.The study uses decision making experiments to study the role of Bayesian updating and contingent reasoning in a series of environments; second price private value auctions, an array of common value auctions, versions of the 'Acquiring a Company' game that have studied by other research teams, and endogenous timing investment games. The researchers use a specially designed individual choice task to classify participants based on their use of Bayesian updating and contingent reasoning. These research subjects then participate in a series of strategically equivalent games to see how behavior in market environments depends on cognitive characteristics.The results apply to a wide range of environments. The requirements for contingent reasoning in any real-world situation depend on a wide variety of factors. Understanding how contingent reasoning affects decisions will allow us to choose those factors in order to encourage people to make the best possible decisions for reaching their chosen goals.