Understanding negotiations: A video approach in experimental gaming

Reinhard Selten since the beginning of his scientific career has been concerned with developing descriptive theories that take account of the boundedly rational behavior of human subjects. The concept of bounded rationality was introduced by Herbert Simon in the 1950s (Simon 1955, 1957), and Selten was immediately convinced by his arguments (Selten 1995). Together with a group of other researchers in Frankfurt around the economist Heinz Sauermann who shared the view that behavior of economic agents is not adequately modeled by "homo oeconomicus" theories Reinhard Selten started to run economic experiments and to develop a corresponding methodology already in the 1950s (see Sauermann and Selten 1967). In Selten’s own words: "We invented experimental economics".