Hello and thank you for taking the time to participate in this experiment. For showing up today, you will receive a base payout of $7 in cash at the end of the session.
You will also have the opportunity to earn additional cash depending on your decisions in the experiement today.
If at any time you wish to leave, you are always free to do so. However, only participants who stay for the duration of the experiment will be eligible for additional cash beyond the $7 show up payout.
Today you will be playing several rounds of a two-player game.
Your opponent is another participant in this room. You will have the same opponent in every round of the game. One of you will be randomly assigned to be Player 1 and the other will be assigned to be Player 2.
Your choices in the games may earn you extra money. The amount of money you will receive in each round depends on your choice and your opponent's choice (as will be described shortly).
You will play at least 5 rounds of the game. After round 5, the game will continue to another round with probability 0.45 and stop with probability 0.55. If a 10th round is reached, the game will terminate automatically after round 10.
Below are instructions for the game. These instructions will also be available when the experiment starts.
The two players are Player 1 and Player 2.
Each player only has two options in each round: A or B. You must choose one of these in every round in under 20 seconds.
The payoffs for each player in the first three rounds are described below.
The above payoff information can be visualized in the payoff matrix below:
| Player 2 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | ||
| Player 1 | A | 4, 4 | 0, 2 |
| B | 1, 0 | 1, 2 | |
Starting with the fourth round, the payoffs will change slightly. Namely, Player 2 will receive 3 points for choosing B. All other aspects of the game remain the same.
The new payoff matrix will look as follows:
| Player 2 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | ||
| Player 1 | A | 4, 4 | 0, 3 |
| B | 1, 0 | 1, 3 | |