Anchors of strategic reasoning in the traveler’s dilemma
通过无反馈的旅行者困境游戏实验，发现玩家在战略推理中锚定的非战略行为并非均匀随机，且玩家在推理深度和非战略信念上存在异质性，这对假设所有玩家有相同初始锚点的常见做法提出警示。
We experimentally study players’ initial beliefs about non-strategic play that anchors their strategic reasoning in the traveler’ s dilemma, a game in which each player chooses a number and has the incentive to undercut their opponent by the minimal amount possible. In a within-subject design, each subject repeatedly plays variations of the traveler’ s dilemma game without feedback. To identify their strategic reasoning, we vary the upper and lower bounds of the strategy space in each round, and also vary the reward/penalty for undercutting. We find that players are both heterogeneous in the amount that they reason, and in their beliefs about non-strategic play. Notably, few players anchor their strategic reasoning on non-strategic uniform random play. We also find ample evidence of non-strategic play. Our results caution against the common practice of assuming the same anchor of initial reasoning for all players when estimating players’ depths of strategic reasoning.