Ettinger, D. and Jehiel, P. (2009) Towards a theory of deception. (ELSE Working Papers 181). ESRC Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution: London, UK.
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Abstract
This paper proposes an equilibrium approach to belief manipulation and deception in which agents only have coarse knowledge of their opponents strategy. Equilibrium requires the coarse knowledge available to agents to be correct, and the inferences and optimizations to be made on the basis of the simplest theories compatible with the available knowledge. The approach can be viewed as formalizing into a game theoretic setting a well documented bias in social psychology, the Fundamental Attribution Er- ror. It is applied to a bargaining problem, thereby revealing a deceptive tactic that is hard to explain in the full rationality paradigm.
| Type: | Working / discussion paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Towards a theory of deception |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | http://else.econ.ucl.ac.uk/newweb/papers.php#2006 |
| Language: | English |
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