{"title":"The Black Box as a Control for Payoff-Based Learning in Economic Games.","authors":"Maxwell N Burton-Chellew, Stuart A West","doi":"10.3390/g13060076","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The black box method was developed as an \"asocial control\" to allow for payoff-based learning while eliminating social responses in repeated public goods games. Players are told they must decide how many virtual coins they want to input into a virtual black box that will provide uncertain returns. However, in truth, they are playing with each other in a repeated social game. By \"black boxing\" the game's social aspects and payoff structure, the method creates a population of self-interested but ignorant or confused individuals that must learn the game's payoffs. This low-information environment, stripped of social concerns, provides an alternative, empirically derived null hypothesis for testing social behaviours, as opposed to the theoretical predictions of rational self-interested agents (<i>Homo economicus</i>). However, a potential problem is that participants can unwittingly affect the learning of other participants. Here, we test a solution to this problem in a range of public goods games by making participants interact, unknowingly, with simulated players (\"computerised black box\"). We find no significant differences in rates of learning between the original and the computerised black box, therefore either method can be used to investigate learning in games. These results, along with the fact that simulated agents can be programmed to behave in different ways, mean that the computerised black box has great potential for complementing studies of how individuals and groups learn under different environments in social dilemmas.</p>","PeriodicalId":35065,"journal":{"name":"Games","volume":"13 6","pages":"76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7614088/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Games","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3390/g13060076","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The black box method was developed as an "asocial control" to allow for payoff-based learning while eliminating social responses in repeated public goods games. Players are told they must decide how many virtual coins they want to input into a virtual black box that will provide uncertain returns. However, in truth, they are playing with each other in a repeated social game. By "black boxing" the game's social aspects and payoff structure, the method creates a population of self-interested but ignorant or confused individuals that must learn the game's payoffs. This low-information environment, stripped of social concerns, provides an alternative, empirically derived null hypothesis for testing social behaviours, as opposed to the theoretical predictions of rational self-interested agents (Homo economicus). However, a potential problem is that participants can unwittingly affect the learning of other participants. Here, we test a solution to this problem in a range of public goods games by making participants interact, unknowingly, with simulated players ("computerised black box"). We find no significant differences in rates of learning between the original and the computerised black box, therefore either method can be used to investigate learning in games. These results, along with the fact that simulated agents can be programmed to behave in different ways, mean that the computerised black box has great potential for complementing studies of how individuals and groups learn under different environments in social dilemmas.
GamesDecision Sciences-Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty
CiteScore
1.60
自引率
11.10%
发文量
65
审稿时长
11 weeks
期刊介绍:
Games (ISSN 2073-4336) is an international, peer-reviewed, quick-refereeing open access journal (free for readers), which provides an advanced forum for studies related to strategic interaction, game theory and its applications, and decision making. The aim is to provide an interdisciplinary forum for all behavioral sciences and related fields, including economics, psychology, political science, mathematics, computer science, and biology (including animal behavior). To guarantee a rapid refereeing and editorial process, Games follows standard publication practices in the natural sciences.