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

Perceptual decisions are often made in complex social settings in which distinct 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 theory. The current article presents 2 experiments that were designed to test these models in the context of repeated 2-person perceptual safety games. In both experiments, pairs of participants performed a simulation of an industrial-production process under distinct payoff rules. Each participant had to try to produce as much as possible while avoiding costly accidents. In line with the descriptive model's predictions, the results showed a slow adjustment to the incentive structure that can be approximated by a reinforcement learning process among different perceptual cutoff strategies. Providing players with prior information about the game had an initial effect but did not alter the pattern of the results.