Special Issue "Games and Psychology"

Guest Editor
Dr. Alan Sanfey
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, P.O.Box 9101, NL-6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands
E-Mail: alan.sanfey@donders.ru.nl
Phone: +31 24 36 10657
Fax: +31 24 36 10989

Dear Colleagues,

Recent interdisciplinary work has attempted to explain how people behave in game theoretic scenarios in terms of fundamental psychological and neural mechanisms such as reward processing, attention, emotion, and personality measures, amongst others. This type of work can deliver important insights, from demonstrating that complex interactive behavior can be understood in terms of basic processes to explaining the variability of behavior by individual differences in cognitive and social abilities as well as variation in genes and pharmacology. This Special Issue seeks to better understand the link between psychological processes and behavior in interactive settings. We welcome all contributions which are interested in exploring the psychological processes, defined broadly, underlying interactive decision-making.

Alan Sanfey
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Games is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 300 CHF (Swiss Francs). English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.

• decision-making
• choice
• neuroeconomics
• game theory
• experimental economics
• learning
• memory
• attention
• risk
• emotion

Title: The Resolution Game: A Dual Selves Perspective
Authors: Dimitri Migrow ¹ and Matthias Uhl ²
Affiliation: ¹ Department of Economics, The University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
² Max Planck Institute of Economics, Kahlaische Straße 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Abstract: Several approaches are used to account for the observation that individuals selfcommit when anticipating their weak will. Previous work has predominantly focused on externally enforced self-commitment devices which rely on third parties. Contrary to that, we explain the emergence of resolutions concerning the consumption of an ambivalent good as a means of internal self-commitment. Uncertainty lies within a person and stems from the idea that she is unsure about her ability to resist a temptation she is exposed to in a different state. In our dual selves model, concrete resolutions result as a compromise between two conflicting selves within the person. The self in the state of planning prefers consumption abstinence while the self in the state of enjoyment prefers consumption excess. Any generous resolution that is made is only a concession from the planner to the enjoyer to avoid such an excess. In the positive part of this article, we derive a unique equilibrium level of resolutions that the planner will form. In the normative part, we discuss how an impartial observer who is not psychologically involved would evaluate the implications of this outcome. Finally, normative differences of our approach to hyperbolic discounting models are outlined.
Keywords: dual selves; resolutions; self-control; impartiality