Mark Thoma — 'New Experiments Challenge Economic Game Assumptions'

Dr Burton-Chellew said: …'The upshot of this is that these games are not reliably measuring motivations and therefore may not be informative of real-world behavior. This has obvious policy implications, as well as implications for our understanding of the evolution of social behavior. Furthermore, it casts doubt on the idea that there are fundamentally different social-types of people. I think it is more useful to focus on when and where people cooperate, rather than identifying who does and does not cooperate, especially in the artificial world of the lab. 

'In short, I would argue that there is too much confidence placed in the results of these economic games; too much confidence in their ability to measure social preferences.'

Economist’s View
'New Experiments Challenge Economic Game Assumptions'
Mark Thoma | Professor of Economics, University of Oregon