My name is Peter Pantelis . I study “theory of mind”—our ability to reason about other people’s mental states. Years ago, I became interested in an economic game called the Beauty Contest, because I think it taps into theory of mind very elegantly: You are going to play a game (against 250 undergraduate psychology students). Each player will submit a whole number from 0 to 100. The winner will be the player whose number is closest to 2/3 of the mean number selected by all the players. What number do you submit? (I’ll wait for you to think about it for a moment) What number should you submit, and why? Game theory says the rational strategy is for you to say 0—and so should everyone else. That’s what economists call the Nash equilibrium. [1] But in practice, virtually nobody submits the “rational” choice of 0. The average number selection is usually something like 25-35. People also give a wide variety of responses, and interpreting this (non-normative) pattern is where th...
A blog at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and mental health