Choosing To Be Informed in a Repeated Trust Game

In repeated social dilemma games, uncertainty about other players' type might help players to sustain high payoffs. In a repeated trust game or centipede game, for example, if matched with a payoff-maximizing second mover, the first mover may be better off when he does not know the second mover is payoff-maximizing than when he does know. We design an experiment to study whether first movers choose to know when they are given the chance to do so, while having the information would be detrimental in payoff terms. In the experiment subjects play a repeated centipede game. In one treatment first movers are not informed about the type of the matched second mover and in another treatment they have the choice to obtain information about the type of the matched second mover. We find that, in the choice treatment, almost all first movers choose to obtain the information about the second mover's type. We also find that, overall, informed first movers are not necessarily worse off than non-informed first movers.