Colin F. Camerer, Robert Kirby of Behavioral Economics
If you're trying to outwit the competition, it might be better to have been born a chimpanzee, according to a study by researchers at Caltech, which found that chimps at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute consistently outperform humans in simple contests drawn from game theory. The study, led by Colin Camerer , Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics, and appearing on June 5 in the online publication Scientific Reports , involved a simple game of hide-and-seek that researchers call the Inspection Game. In the game, two players (either a pair of chimps or a pair of humans) are set up back to back, each facing a computer screen. To start the game, each player pushes a circle on the monitor and then selects one of two blue boxes on the left or right side of the screen. After both players have chosen left or right, the computer shows each player her opponent's choice. This continues through 200 iterations per game. The goal of the players in the "hiding" role-the "mismatchers"-is to choose the opposite of their opponent's selection.
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