Motivation

In discussing the limitations of game experiments, Camerer and Fehr state: “Of course, games are reductions of social phenomena to something extremely simple, but they can always be made more complex. A painter who first sketches a line drawing on a blank canvas has reduced a complex image to two dimensions of space and color. But the line drawing is also a platform on which more complex images can be restored” (Camerer and Fehr, p. 85). I wonder if this is true.

I do not doubt that we can reduce a complex social phenomenon to a single transaction that can be modelled, create a simple language with which to explain this transaction, and later re-introduce complexity. What I am skeptical about is the suggestion that, at the end of all this, we can arrive at a more accurate account of the social phenomenon that we originally sought to understand. My doubt arises from two very different types of considerations.

First of all, it seems to me that this type of project can transform the subject it seeks to explain. In reducing a person to a game-playing agent (e.g., one who does not communicate with or have knowledge of others, and performs tasks divorced from the social context in which they are normally integrated), we might not reach a blank frame on which to build a realistic model of human agency. Rather, in creating a new baseline against which human action is measured and understood, we might end up with a model that does not support the re-introduction of the complexity that we originally stripped away.

At another level, I wonder if rules/norms actually govern human action. It seems to me that this assumption is a driving force behind the game-theory project. Ostrom, for example, suggests that learning heuristics, norms, and rules should occupy an important role in second-generation models of rationality. While I agree in part, I have doubts about whether human behavior is explained, or merely described, by rules—about whether rules are the causes, or merely reasons that we give, for what we do. If rules are best understood as descriptive, game experiments may not give rise to a “deeper” picture of the social world.

Neither of the two points I have briefly touched on here are criticisms of the use of game theory in the social sciences. I raise them merely as things to consider when thinking about the fascinating behavior that games uncover.