Strategic Uncertainty and Risk Attitudes:"The Experimental Connection"

In this paper we obtain empirical evidence of the relationship between individuals' risk attitudes and individuals' beliefs on their rival's choices in the Prisoners' Dilemma game. We find that (i) Risk-averse subjects seem to think that their opponent will defect, (ii) Risk-loving individuals tend to think that their opponent will cooperate with higher probabilities, and (iii) finally, those subjects who believe that the rival will behave rationally are more risk averse than those subjects that believe that the rival will make a mistake, who on average are risk neutral.