Information Acquisition in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game: An Eye-Tracking Study

Eye-tracking recordings were used to explore the choice process in playing the iterated Prisoner’s dilemma. This is a novel approach in studying the cognitive processes in game playing. The information acquisition patterns of two groups of subjects, identified on the basis of their playing behavior, were compared. The subjects from the first group paid more attention to the game payoffs and showed a strong dependence on their relative magnitudes. The subjects from the second group paid less attention to the payoff matrix but spent more time considering the opponent moves. These results show that the analysis of eye movement can give valuable information about the processes of decision making.