{"pk":28568,"title":"A Resource-Rational Mechanistic Approach to One-shot Non-cooperative Games:The Case of Prisoner’s Dilemma","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The concept of Nash equilibrium has played a profound rolein economics, and is widely accepted as a normative stance forhow people should choose their strategies in competitive envi-ronments. However, extensive empirical evidence shows thatpeople often systematically deviate from Nash equilibrium. Inthis work, we present the first resource-rational mechanisticapproach to one-shot, non-cooperative games (ONG), show-ing that a variant of normative expected-utility maximizationacknowledging cognitive limitations can account for impor-tant deviations from the prescriptions of Nash equilibrium inONGs. Concretely, we show that Nobandegani et al.’s (2018)metacognitively-rational model, sample-based expected util-ity, can account for purportedly irrational cooperation rates ob-served in one-shot, non-cooperative Prisoner’s Dilemma, andcan accurately explain how cooperation rate varies dependingon the parameterization of the game. Additionally, our workprovides a resource-rational explanation of why people withhigher general intelligence tend to cooperate less in OPDs, andserves as the first (Bayesian) rational, process-level explana-tion of a well-known violation of the law of total probability inOPDs, documented by Shafir and Tversky (1992), which hasresisted explanation by a model governed by classical proba-bility theory for nearly three decades. Surprisingly, our workdemonstrates that cooperation can arise from purely selfish,expected-utility maximization subject to cognitive limitations.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"One-shot non-cooperative games; Nash equilib-rium; resource-rational process models; expected utility the-ory; behavioral game theory; Prisoner’s Dilemma; cooperation"}],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9dz6h6tn","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Ardavan","middle_name":"S.","last_name":"Nobandegani","name_suffix":"","institution":"McGill University","department":""},{"first_name":"Kevin","middle_name":"da Silva","last_name":"Castanheira","name_suffix":"","institution":"McGill University","department":""},{"first_name":"Thomas","middle_name":"R.","last_name":"Shultz","name_suffix":"","institution":"McGill University","department":""},{"first_name":"A. Ross","middle_name":"","last_name":"Otto","name_suffix":"","institution":"McGill University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2019-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28568/galley/18439/download/"}]}