Game and decision theory start from rather strong premises. Preferences, represented by utilities, beliefs represented by probabilities, common knowledge and symmetric rationality as background assumptions are treated as “given.” A richer language enabling us to capture the process leading...

Human decision making is a process guided by different and partly competing mo-tivations that can each dominate behavior and lead to different effects depending on strength and circumstances. “Over-stylizing” neglects such competing concerns and context-dependence, although it facilitates...

The satisficing approach is generalized and applied to finite n-person games.Based on direct elicitation of aspirations, we formally define the conceptof satisficing, which does not exclude (prior-free) optimality but includesit as a border case. We also review some experiments on strategic...

On a heterogeneous experimental oligopoly market, sellers choose a price,specify a set-valued prior-free conjecture about the others' behavior, andform their own profit-aspiration for each element of their conjecture. Weformally define the concepts of satisficing and prior-free optimality...

Similar to welfare economics where with(out) interpersonal comparisonsone defines unique (set-valued) welfare (Pareto) optima, we present a frameworkfor one-person decision making where with(out) a prior probability distributionindividual optimality prescribes usually a unique (set of)...

We experimentally explore individual and interactive decision making ina sequential search task and test whether generally accepted principles ofbounded rationality (aspiration formation, satisficing, and aspiration adjustment)adequately explain the observed search behavior. Subjects can, at...

In the Yes/No game, like in the ultimatum game, proposer and respondercan share a monetary reward. In both games the proposer suggests a rewarddistribution which the responder can accept or reject (yielding 0-payoffs). Thegames only differ in that the responder does (not) learn the suggested...

In this note we establish that rational demand expectations willtypically not evolve in an evolutionary model. In an evolutionarymodel beliefs act like a commitment device to more aggressive be-havior. This commitment effect has the same direction for strategicsubstitutes and complements and...