The effect of shared responsibility and competition in perceptual games: Atest of a cognitive game-theoretic extension of signal-detection theory

Perceptual decisions are often made in complex social settings in which dis tinct observers can affect each other. To address such situations, I. Erev, D. Gopher, R. Itkin, and Y. Greenshpan (1995) proposed a formal extension of signal-detection theory and a descriptive modification of the extended t heory. The current article presents 2 experiments that were designed to tes t these models in the context of repeated 2-person perceptual safety games. In both experiments, pairs of participants performed a simulation of an in dustrial-production process under distinct payoff rules. Each participant h ad to try to produce as much as possible while avoiding costly accidents. I n line with the descriptive model's predictions, the results showed a slow adjustment to the incentive structure that can be approximated by a reinfor cement learning process among different perceptual cutoff strategies. Provi ding players with prior information about the game had an initial effect bu t did not alter the pattern of the results.