Cognitive load and strategic sophistication

• We study the cognitive load manipulation and strategic sophistication.
• We find that the effect of the manipulation is not persistent across classes of games.
• Actions and beliefs may not be closely related as predicted by standard game theory.

We study the relationship between the cognitive load manipulation and strategic sophistication. The cognitive load manipulation is designed to reduce the subject's cognitive resources that are available for deliberation on a choice. In our experiment, subjects are placed under a high cognitive load (given a difficult number to remember) or a low cognitive load (given a number that is not difficult to remember). Subsequently, the subjects play a one-shot game then they are asked to recall the number. This procedure is repeated for various games. We find that the relationship between cognitive load and strategic sophistication is not persistent across classes of games. This lack of persistence is consistent with recent findings in the literature. We also find that the relationship between cognitive load and actions is different from the relationship between cognitive load and beliefs. This suggests that actions and beliefs may not be as closely related as standard game theory would predict.