EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR THE WEAKEST LINK COORDINATION GAME
Round 1, Percent of Subjects Round 10, Percent of Subjects Action Choosing that Action Choosing that Action
7 31% 7%
6 9% 0%
5 32% 1%
4 16% 2%
3 5% 2%
2 5% 16%
1 2% 72%
In the initial round, 31% of the students chose the highest strategy, and 88% chose strategy 4 or higher. Only 2% chose the lowest strategy. By way of com- parison, had the students simply made random choices, each strategy would be selected 14.3% of the time. (There are seven strategies, and Higher strategies were chosen more frequently than randomness would suggest. That’s encouraging. But as the game was played again and again, it became a “race to the bottom.” There was a gradual movement to lower strategies, so that by the
1 7 � .143.)
5.2 Symmetric Games 125
end of the fourth round, the minimum choice in every trial was strategy 1. By round 10, strategy 1 was selected by 72% of the students. Their behavior was converging to the worst equilibrium.*