Modeling recursive reasoning by humans using empirically informed interactive POMDPs

Recursive reasoning of the form what do I think that you think that I think (and so on) arises often while acting rationally in multiagent settings. Several multiagent decision-making frameworks such as RMM, I-POMDP and the theory of mind model recursive reasoning as integral to an agent's rational choice. Real-world application settings for multiagent decision making are often mixed involving humans and human-controlled agents. In two large experiments, we studied the level of recursive reasoning generally displayed by humans while playing sequential general-sum and fixedsum, two-player games. Our results show that subjects experiencing a general-sum strategic game display first or second level of recursive thinking with the first level being more prominent. However, if the game is made simpler and more competitive with fixedsum payoffs, subjects predominantly attributed first-level recursive thinking to opponents thereby acting using second level of reasoning. Subsequently, we ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: Prashant Doshi, Xia Qu, Adam Goodie, Diana Young
• Keywords: ATAL 2010, Intelligent Agents, Model Recursive Reasoning, Multiagent, Recursive Reasoning