Complexity of Networking - An Experimental Study of the Network Hawk Dove Game

Complexity of strategies is central for human decision making and attracted interest of different game theorists in the recent years. Nevertheless, behavioral economists have neglected the importance of complexity in their analyses. In this paper, we analyze network formation and action selection in a Hawk Dove Game with focus on complexity aspects. We conduct experiments with three variants of the game which are equivalent from a game theoretic perspective, but differ from a complexity theoretic perspective. Our results show, that complexity of decision making has an impact on the strategies played and that efficiency is higher the less complex the decision problem is.