Chimps Surpass Humans in Conforming to Game Theory
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chimps-outplay-humans-in-brain-games1/
An game was set up in which two different players have two potential moves. Each player can either choose to press button 1 or button 2. The catch is that player A wins if both players press the same button. Player B wins if the two buttons differ. This game is performed repetitively, forcing the players to predict their opponent’s next move in order to gain a reward. The game can be modeled by the table shown below:
The interesting aspect of this game was that it featured a chimp against a human. The surprising result was that the chimp outperformed the human. In Camerer’s experiment described above, the chimp played a near ideal game, whereas the human was a ways away from theoretical predictions. What this suggests is that chimps have a far superior memory and pattern recognition, as the chimp was better able to analyze the human’s moves and make predictions in order to win the game.