“I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games

We let participants indicate their intended action in a repeated game experiment where actions are implemented with errors. Even though communication is cheap talk, we find that the majority of messages were honest (although the majority of participants lied at least occasionally). As a result, comm...

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Main Authors: Arechar, Antonio A., Dreber, Anna, Fudenberg, Drew
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier BV 2020
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124530
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author Arechar, Antonio A.
Dreber, Anna
Fudenberg, Drew
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Arechar, Antonio A.
Dreber, Anna
Fudenberg, Drew
author_sort Arechar, Antonio A.
collection MIT
description We let participants indicate their intended action in a repeated game experiment where actions are implemented with errors. Even though communication is cheap talk, we find that the majority of messages were honest (although the majority of participants lied at least occasionally). As a result, communication has a positive effect on cooperation when the payoff matrix makes the returns to cooperation high; when the payoff matrix gives a lower return to cooperation, communication reduces overall cooperation. These results suggest that cheap talk communication can promote cooperation in repeated games, but only when there is already a self-interested motivation to cooperate. ©2017
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spelling mit-1721.1/1245302022-09-28T10:44:21Z “I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games Arechar, Antonio A. Dreber, Anna Fudenberg, Drew Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics We let participants indicate their intended action in a repeated game experiment where actions are implemented with errors. Even though communication is cheap talk, we find that the majority of messages were honest (although the majority of participants lied at least occasionally). As a result, communication has a positive effect on cooperation when the payoff matrix makes the returns to cooperation high; when the payoff matrix gives a lower return to cooperation, communication reduces overall cooperation. These results suggest that cheap talk communication can promote cooperation in repeated games, but only when there is already a self-interested motivation to cooperate. ©2017 National Science Foundation Grant (no. SES- 1258665) 2020-04-08T15:34:57Z 2020-04-08T15:34:57Z 2017-07 2017-03 2019-09-26T14:23:35Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1090-2473 0899-8256 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124530 Arechar, Antonio A., Anna Dreber, and DrewFudenberg, "'I'm just a soul whose intentions are good': the role of communication in noisy repeated games." Games and economic behavior 104 (2017): p. 726-743 doi 10.1016/J.GEB.2017.06.013 ©2017 Author(s) en 10.1016/J.GEB.2017.06.013 Games and economic behavior Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ application/pdf Elsevier BV SSRN
spellingShingle Arechar, Antonio A.
Dreber, Anna
Fudenberg, Drew
“I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games
title “I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games
title_full “I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games
title_fullStr “I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games
title_full_unstemmed “I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games
title_short “I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games
title_sort i m just a soul whose intentions are good the role of communication in noisy repeated games
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124530
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