Strategic Thinking: A Random Walk Into the Rabbit Hole

At its best, strategic thinking yields an advantage needed to beat opponent. the least, it protects person from exploitation. In four studies, conducted in two countries, we used a simple number-guessing game, which one respondent wins by guessing number chosen another. We show that people generate numbers nonrandomly, and, on basis of this finding, predict and find nonrandom choice is advantageous guesser if chooser does not randomize either. As expected, respondents role preferred play game they were actively think instead randomizing had number, too. Guessers did prefer selected randomly. Having shown these limitations reasoning, close with observation successful reasoning may – at times require breaking rules being first do so.