Consciously uncertain: A Bayesian analysis of preferences formation

We investigate experimentally whether players deliberately use irrelevant market cues to shape their evaluations of a traded item. We implement a repeated Vickrey median price selling auction of an unusual bad where players are informed on the market price and on the three lowest or highest asks. We...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGames Vol. 13; no. 1; pp. 1 - 20
Main Authors Stimolo, Marco, Beraldo, Sergio, Capasso, Salvatore, Filoso, Valerio
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI 01.02.2022
MDPI AG
Subjects
Appraisals
Bayesian analysis
bayesian methods
Behavior
Economics
irrelevant market signals
Market prices
Players
Preference analysis
Priming
Questionnaires
Random variables
shaping effect
subjects' consideration
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ISSN2073-4336
2073-4336
DOI10.3390/g13010014

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Summary:We investigate experimentally whether players deliberately use irrelevant market cues to shape their evaluations of a traded item. We implement a repeated Vickrey median price selling auction of an unusual bad where players are informed on the market price and on the three lowest or highest asks. We elicited players' consideration of market signals through a questionnaire at the end of the auction. We find that extreme information has a stronger influence on players' evaluations than the market price. However, players' consideration of the market signals explains their behavioral reactivity to the market price but not to the extremes. Hence, players deliberately use an unbiased estimator of the central tendency of the appraisals distribution, while extreme asks' influence is consistent with a priming effect.
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ISSN:2073-4336
2073-4336
DOI:10.3390/g13010014