HOW I WOULD PLAY THE ULTIMATUM GAME.

HOW I WOULD PLAY THE ULTIMATUM GAME. It seems to me that if I am a subject—a “competitor”—in the ultimatum game, and I am challenged by the other player to take a small amount because a small amount is better than nothing, and I take the small amount, I will think that I lost that game. Unless the sum of money is large enough for me to ignore the competitive aspects of the game, I am not going to let the ultimatum giver beat me. It may not be economically rational, according to the experimenters, but the other player and I are both going to wind up with nothing, and I am going to think it’s a draw. If it’s a game, what matters is winning, not a few tokens as consolation. I think that the experiment says more about the nature of games than it does about economic rationality.