The role of context and team play in cross-game learning

Cooper, D.J. and Kagel, J.H. (2009) The role of context and team play in cross-game learning. Journal of the European Economic Association, 7 (5). pp. 1101-1139. ISSN 1542-4766

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Abstract

One of the dividing lines between economics and psychology experiments is that economists favor abstract context while psychologists favor meaningful context. We investigate the effects of meaningful versus abstract context on cross-game learning in a signaling game experiment. With individual decision makers (1 × 1 games) meaningful context promotes positive cross-game learning in moving from a pooling equilibrium to a separating equilibrium, whereas abstract context yields negative cross-game learning. In 1×1 games a change in the (meaning-ful) context which accompanies "superficial" changes in the game stalls the learning process compared to an abstract context that does not change. In contrast, with two-person teams the same change in meaningful context has no disruptive effect on strategic play, with teams also having substantially higher levels of strategic play than the 1 × 1 games. We relate the effects of meaningful versus abstract context on cross-game learning to the psychology literature on deductive reasoning processes.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural Economics
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	22 Nov 2013 14:00
Last Modified:	18 Apr 2023 23:42
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/44401
DOI:	10.1162/JEEA.2009.7.5.1101

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