A social heuristics hypothesis for the stag-hunt: fast and slow-thinking hunters in the lab. CESifo Working Paper

In this paper, we analyze the role of intuitive versus deliberative thinking in stag hunt games. To do so we, first, provide a conceptual framework predicting that, under the assumption that stag is the ruling social convention in real life interactions, players who make their choices fast and intuitively, relying on social heuristics, choose stag more often than other players. Second, we run a lab experiment and use a time pressure treatment to induce fast and intuitive thinking. We find that: (i) players under the time pressure treatment are more likely to choose stag than individuals in the control group; (ii) individual choices under the time pressure treatment are less sensitive to the size of the basin of attraction of stag; (iii) these results are largely driven by less experienced participants. Overall, our findings provide support to the Social Heuristics Hypothesis (Rand et al., 2012) applied to stag hunt interactions.