Predicting Human Interactive Learning by Regret-Driven Neural Networks

Davide Marchiori¹ and Massimo Warglien^2*

Much of human learning in a social context has an interactive nature: What an individual learns is affected by what other individuals are learning at the same time. Games represent a widely accepted paradigm for representing interactive decision-making. We explored the potential value of neural networks for modeling and predicting human interactive learning in repeated games. We found that even very simple learning networks, driven by regret-based feedback, accurately predict observed human behavior in different experiments on 21 games with unique equilibria in mixed strategies. Introducing regret in the feedback dramatically improved the performance of the neural network. We show that regret-based models provide better predictions of learning than established economic models.

¹ Interdepartmental Center for Research Training in Economics and Management (CIFREM), University of Trento, Italy.
² Advanced School of Economics and Department of Business Economics and Management, Ca' Foscari University, Venezia, Italy.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: warglien@unive.it

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