Motivational bases of choice in experimental games

The present study presents a motivational theory of choice behavior in game situations, and develops a method that provides a flexible means for comparing the relative dominance of the various social motives postulated to underlie choice behavior in such situations. An experiment is conducted to test a set of hypothesized relationships between two conditions of interpersonal set, “partner” and “opponent”; three conditions of cumulative display of scores, “own,” “joint,” and “difference”; six classes of decomposed games; and the subjects' actual choice behavior. It was observed that whereas set did not affect the subject's choice behavior, there was a highly significant interaction between the display conditions and the classes of games. Finally, the relative utility of an algebraic and a stochastic choice model were evaluated in terms of the data obtained in the study.