Can strategic thinking be taught or is it a matter of cognitive ability and personality -An experimental study

Abstract: Can strategic thinking be taught? Randomized experiments were organized to estimate the effect of information nudge on strategic decisions. The information nudge consisted of seeing a short text and a picture with an explanation related to game theory. Test subjects played two games: a p-beauty contest game and a variable-sum game. The main finding was surprising; the treatment was related to answering significantly higher numbers in the p-beauty contest game independent of cognitive ability, personality, and background characteristics. This implies that the information nudge had a negative effect on decisions. The explanation for the finding may be the new information decreasing the test subjects' self-confidence, causing worse decisions (Zheng et al. 2020).