Hybrid Model Reveals People Act Less Rationally In Complex Games, More Predictably In Simple Ones (phys.org)
- Reference: 0178314626
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/08/2220223/hybrid-model-reveals-people-act-less-rationally-in-complex-games-more-predictably-in-simple-ones
- Source link: https://phys.org/news/2025-07-hybrid-reveals-people-rationally-complex.html
> Researchers at Princeton University, Boston University and other institutes used machine learning to predict the strategic decisions of humans in various games. Their paper, [2]published in Nature Human Behavior , shows that a deep neural network trained on human decisions could predict the strategic choices of players with high levels of accuracy. [...] Essentially, the team suggests that people [3]behave more rationally while playing games that they perceive as easier . In contrast, when they are playing more complex games, people's choices could be influenced by various other factors, thus the "noise" affecting their behavior would increase.
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> As part of their future studies, the researchers would also like to shed more light on what makes a game "complex" or "easy." This could be achieved using the context-dependent noise parameter that they integrated into their model as a signature of "perceived difficulty." "Our analysis provides a robust model comparison across a wide range of candidate models of decision-making," said [Jian-Qiao Zhu, first author of the paper]. "We now have strong evidence that introducing context-dependence into the quantal response model significantly improves its ability to capture human strategic behavior. More specifically, we identified key factors in the game matrix that shape game complexity: considerations of efficiency, the arithmetic difficulty of computing payoff differences, and the depth of reasoning required to arrive at a rational solution."
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> The findings gathered as part of this recent study also highlight the "lightness" with which many people approach strategic decisions, which could make them vulnerable to parties looking to sway them towards making irrational decisions. Once they gather more insight into what factors make games and decision-making scenarios more challenging for people, Zhu and his colleagues hope to start devising new behavioral science interventions aimed at prompting people to make more rational decisions.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~alternative_right
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02230-5
[3] https://phys.org/news/2025-07-hybrid-reveals-people-rationally-complex.html
"make more rational decisions" (Score:2)
"more rational" for who?
Re: (Score:2)
I presume that they mean decisions that give a more favorable outcome. This does not seem very hard to explain. In simple situations, it is easier to determine the actions that will give the desired outcome. In complex situations, this becomes more difficult. So, what they have discovered is that more complex situations are harder to understand. This does not seem to be a deep insight to me.
Stepping on toes (Score:2)
> Zhu and his colleagues hope to start devising new behavioral science interventions aimed at prompting people to make more rational decisions
What? They want to undermine the decades of applied propaganda science which has resulted in fairly reliable shaping of public thought and behaviour? How dare they co-opt somebody else's research subjects!
Tesla Drives think they're playing Mario Cart (Score:2)
Hwy. 17 between Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz are two lanes of 65MPG traffic. Maybe at 2am without any accidents.
During rush hour, (8am and 5pm commutes), it turns into slower, congested traffic where drivers seem to forget the "1 car length for every 10MPH" rule I learned in Driver's Ed in 1970. Back in the 2000s, there used to be a web site "HWY17 HALL OF SHAME" where people would post phone camera pics of assholes who followed to slowly complete with license plate visible. I'm sure Auto Insurance comp
Bad news, gentlemen... (Score:3)
"Once they gather more insight into what factors make games and decision-making scenarios more challenging for people, Zhu and his colleagues hope to start devising new behavioral science interventions aimed at prompting people to make more rational decisions."
The guys who do mobile game monetization are laughing into ~$125 billion/year at the idea of someone attempting to study how games make people act irrationally in order to do something other than encourage them. And that's not counting the overt gambling and day trader facilitating operations.
Re: (Score:2)
how irrational is cheating? and yet look how it pervades not only our games but also our society, people put shallow self-gratification before ethical decisions almost every time, this is why our society is corrupt, crumbling and ineffective, our leadership is steering us all right to hell