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

该项目关注两种认知能力，这两种认知能力可能在人们在不完全信息的情况下做出战略决策时偏离理性方面发挥关键作用。 第一个是决策者在获得新信息时以统计正确的方式调整其信念的能力-换句话说，执行贝叶斯更新的能力。 第二是在做出决策之前仔细思考可能的相关情景的能力，研究者称之为“权变推理”，本研究采用决策实验来研究贝叶斯更新和权变推理在一系列环境中的作用;第二价格私人价值拍卖，一系列共同价值拍卖，其他研究团队研究过的“收购公司”游戏版本，和内生的择时投资博弈。 研究人员使用一个专门设计的个人选择任务，根据他们使用贝叶斯更新和或然推理对参与者进行分类。 然后，这些研究对象参与一系列策略等价的博弈，以观察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。 在任何现实世界中，偶然推理的要求取决于各种各样的因素。 了解偶然推理如何影响决策，将使我们能够选择这些因素，以鼓励人们做出最好的决定，以达到他们所选择的目标。

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.