Abstract

This chapter aims to illustrate evolutionary explanations for the emergence of framing effects, discussed in detail in Cristina Bicchieri’s The Grammar of Society. It shows how framing effects might evolve which coalesce two economically distinct interactions into a single one, leading to apparently irrational behavior in each individual interaction. Here it considers the now well-known example of the ultimatum game, and shows how this ‘irrational’ behavior might result from a single norm, which governs behavior in multiple games. The chapter also shows how framing effects might result in radically different play in strategically identical situations. It considers the Hawk–Dove game (the game of chicken) and also the Nash bargaining game. Here arbitrary tags or signals might result in one party doing better than another.