Beliefs and endogenous cognitive levels: An experimental study

In this paper we use a laboratory setting to manipulate our subjectsʼ beliefs about the cognitive levels of the players they are playing against. We show that in the context of the 2/3 guessing game, individual choices crucially depend on their beliefs about the level of others. Hence, a subjectʼs true cognitive level may be different than the one he exhibits in a game with the difference being attributed to his expectations about the sophistication of the players he is playing against.