Towards a Theory of Deception

Jehiel, Philippe; Ettinger, David

Jehiel, Philippe; Ettinger, David (2007-07), Towards a Theory of Deception. https://basepub.dauphine.fr/handle/123456789/11188

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deception.pdf (221.2Kb)

Type

Document de travail / Working paper

Date

2007-07

Éditeur

UCLA Department of Economic

Titre de la collection

Levine's Bibliography

Numéro dans la collection

843644000000000126

Ville d’édition

Los Angeles

Métadonnées

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Auteur(s)

Jehiel, Philippe
Ettinger, David

Résumé (EN)

This paper proposes an equilibrium approach to belief manipulation and deception in which agents only have coarse knowledge of their opponent s 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 Error. It is applied to a bargaining problem, thereby revealing a deceptive tactic that is hard to explain in the full rationality paradigm.