“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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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
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Elsevier BV
2020
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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 |
first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:53:22Z |
format | Article |
id | mit-1721.1/124530 |
institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
language | English |
last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:53:22Z |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Elsevier BV |
record_format | dspace |
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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