Social Spiral Pattern in Experimental 2x2 Games

TL;DR

This paper discovers a social spiral pattern in human 2x2 game experiments, revealing macro-level order beyond micro-level randomness using a novel vector field analysis method.

Contribution

It introduces a new lattice vector field approach to identify emergent social spiral patterns in experimental game data.

Findings

Identification of social spiral pattern in human 2x2 game data

Macro-level order exists beyond micro-level stochasticity

Proposes a novel analysis method for experimental economics

Abstract

With evolutionary game theory, mathematicians, physicists and theoretical biologists usually show us beautiful figures of population dynamic patterns. 2x2 game (matching pennies game) is one of the classical cases. In this letter, we report our finding that, there exists a dynamical pattern, called as social spiral, in human subjects 2x2 experiment data. In a flow/velocity vector field method, we explore the data in the discrete lattices of the macro-level social strategy space in the games, and then above spiral pattern emergent. This finding hints that, there exists a macro-level order beyond the stochastic process in micro-level. We notice that, the vector pattern provides an interesting way to conceal evolutionary game theory models and experimental economics data. This lattice vector field method provides a novel way for models evaluating and experiment designing.