Personality traits and strategic behavior: Anxiousness and aggressiveness in entry games

•We measure anxiousness and aggressiveness of players in an entry game.•We find that players’ personality affects their behavior in the entry game.•We find that players are sensitive to others’ personality and adjust their behavior accordingly.

We demonstrate that personality has a systematic effect on strategic behavior. We focus on two personality traits: anxiousness and aggressiveness, and consider a 2-player entry game, where each player can guarantee a payoff by staying out, a higher payoff if she is the only player to enter, but a lower payoff if both players enter. We find that: anxious players enter less; aggressive players enter more; players are more likely to enter against anxious than non-anxious players; and players are less likely to enter against aggressive than non-aggressive players. We discuss the possible mechanism through which personality affects strategic behavior.