Predictable Effects of Visual Salience in Experimental Decisions and Games*

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Li, Xiaomin; Camerer, Colin F.
• 署名单位: California Institute of Technology
• 刊物名称: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-5533
• DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjac025
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 1849-1900
• 关键词: STRATEGIC THINKING; rational inattention; guessing games; tax salience; Focal points; top-down; attention; MODEL; CHOICE; BEHAVIOR

摘要

Bottom-up stimulus-driven visual salience is largely automatic, effortless, and independent of a person's top-down perceptual goals; it depends only on features of a visual stimulus. Algorithms have been carefully trained to predict stimulus-driven salience values for each pixel in any image. The economic question we address is whether these salience values help explain economic decisions. Our first experimental analysis shows that when people pick between sets of fruits that have artificially induced value, predicted salience (which is uncorrelated with value by design) leads to mistakes. Our second analysis uses evidence from games in which choices are locations in images. When players are trying to cooperatively match locations, predicted salience is highly correlated with the success of matching (r = .57). In competitive hider-seeker location games, players choose salient locations more often than predicted by the unique Nash equilibrium. This tendency creates a disequilibrium seeker's advantage (seekers win more often than predicted in equilibrium). The result can be explained by level-k models in which predicted stimulus-driven salience influences level-0 choices and thereby influences overall perceptions, beliefs, and choices of higher-level players. The third analysis shows that there is an effect of visual salience in matrix games, but it is small and statistically weak. Applications to behavioral IO, price and tax salience, nudges and design, and visually influenced beliefs are suggested.