Decision-making with reference information

Abstract

We often try to predict others' actions by obtaining supporting information that shows a preference index of surrounding people. In order to reproduce these situations, we propose a game named "One-sided Preference Game with Reference Information (OSPG-R)." We conducted experiments in which players who have similar preferences compete for objects in OSPG-R. In the experiment, we used three different types of objects: boxes, faces, and cars. Our results show that the most frequently selected object was not the most popular one. In order to gain deeper insights into the experiment's results, we constructed a decision-making model based on two assumptions: (1) players are rational and (2) are convinced that the other players' preference orders are equivalent to the preference index for the group. Compared to the choice behavior of the model, the experiment's results show that there was a tendency to take risks when the objects were faces, or the priority of that particular player was low.