“I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games
Author(s)
Arechar, Antonio A.; Dreber, Anna; Fudenberg, Drew
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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
Date issued
2017-07Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of EconomicsJournal
Games and economic behavior
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
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)
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
1090-2473
0899-8256