The project is grounded in the prospect theory perspective, accordino to which the relationships between the alternatives in the choice set can influence judgment and choice. Starting from the seminal article by Tversky, Shafir (1992), the effect of dominance (conflict) in the set on the willingness to defer choice is analysed. Extensive field research will be developed to test and increase ecological validity of Tversky, Shafir (1992) data and to build baseline data for the development of further fMRI test. fMri will be employed in order to understand which processes are actually in play when the decision maker is facing different choice sets with different characteristics. Further, according to different choice sets, it is expected that the subject could be present vs. future biased and hence choose deferral according to such biases, another hypothesis to be tested by the means of fMRI.

We analyze (theoretically and experimentally) a simple protocol of positional learning based on the classic parlor game known as the Chinos' Game. In this game, players, have to produce, in some pre-specified order, a guess on the total number of coins hifing in the hands of every player. When doing so, a player is informed of her own number of coins and the guesses produced by all others who preceded her. Previous experimental evidence on the Chinos Game (see Feri et al. 2006) shows systematic deviations from equilibrium, described as error cascades: the higher the probability of a deviation from optimal behavior (i.e. an error) on behalf of first movers, the higher the probability of a mistake in late-movers' behavior. In the current project, we rationalize error cascades by characterizing McKelvey and Palfrey's [1995] Quantal Response Equilibrium of the Chinos' Game. This approach postulates that players behave optimally subject to an error, whose probability is inversely related to the associated cost (in terms of payoff loss). Our theoretical conjecture motivates an experimental design in which the opportunity cost of a mistake is controlled by varying (by way of an exogenous iid stochastic process) the probability of getting the prize in the event of a correct guess. By this design, we should be able to estimate players' sensitivity to difference in payoffs when taking their decisions (and how this sensitivity affects information decoding process along the sequence).