Impulse Balance Theory and its Extension by an Additional Criterion

In this paper I present a description of the theory of impulse balance. This theory predicts a mixed strategy for every player in an arbitrary n-person game in normal form. However, this mixed strategy is not interpreted as the result of a process of rational deliberation, but rather the behavioral distribution of pure strategies in a long section of a supergame of the normal form game.

In a business problem not directly treatable by impulse balance the theory can be applied nevertheless with the help of an additional criterion 70% correct long term predictions of the future distribution of decision behavior were obtained in the evaluation of first experiements.