Focal point
When several equilibria are available and nothing in the payoffs chooses between them, players settle on whichever one stands out to both of them for reasons outside the game.
Often misread asTreating the focal point as a property of the game, so people search the payoffs for the reason one equilibrium gets chosen.
How to see it
The answer the payoffs cannot give you
When several arrangements would suit everybody equally well, the payoffs cannot choose between them. What chooses is whatever both parties expect the other to notice: a round number, a landmark, a precedent, the obvious answer in that culture. The selection arrives from outside the game.
The checkThe game is silent by construction. Salience comes from the shared context the players bring, and it changes when that context changes while the game stays identical.
Try itAsk two people to meet somewhere in a city today without communicating. Note how fast they name a place, then note that nothing in the problem said that place was better. Change the city and watch the answer change while the game does not.
Games that show it
Know these first
Easily confused with
Sources
- Schelling, T. (1960). Harvard University Press.
- Lewis, D. (1969). Harvard University Press.
- Mehta, J., Starmer, C. and Sugden, R. (1994). American Economic Review 84(3), 658-673.