Meaningful learning in weighted voting games: an experiment

• Published in: Theory and decision Vol. 83; no. 1; pp. 131 - 153
• Main Authors: Guerci, Eric, Hanaki, Nobuyuki, Watanabe, Naoki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.06.2017; Springer Nature B.V; Springer Verlag
• Subjects: Behavioral/Experimental Economics; Committees; Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods; Economics; Economics and Finance; Feedback; Finance; Game Theory; Games; Humanities and Social Sciences; Insurance; Introspection; Learning; Management; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Payoffs; Social and Behav. Sciences; Statistics for Business; Voting; Learning; Two-armed bandit problem; C79; Voting game; Experiment; C92; D72; D83; voting game; learning; experiment; two-armed bandit problem
• ISSN: 0040-5833; 1573-7187; 1573-7187
• DOI: 10.1007/s11238-017-9588-x

By employing binary committee choice problems, this paper investigates how varying or eliminating feedback about payoffs affects: (1) subjects’ learning about the underlying relationship between their nominal voting weights and their expected payoffs in weighted voting games; (2) the transfer of acquired learning from one committee choice problem to a similar but different problem. In the experiment, subjects choose to join one of two committees (weighted voting games) and obtain a payoff stochastically determined by a voting theory. We found that: (i) subjects learned to choose the committee that generates a higher expected payoff even without feedback about the payoffs they received; (ii) there was statistically significant evidence of “meaningful learning” (transfer of learning) only for the treatment with no payoff-related feedback. This finding calls for re-thinking existing models of learning to incorporate some type of introspection.