Communicating in a coordination game with private information

We consider an experiment with a version of the Battle of the Sexes game with two-sided private information, preceded by a round of either one-way or two-way cheap talk. We compare different treatments to study truthful revelation of information and subsequent payoffs from the game. We find that individuals are largely truthful (about 80% overall) in revealing their types in both one-way and two-way cheap talk. Furthermore, the unique symmetric cheap-talk equilibrium in the two-way cheap talk game is played when the players fully reveal their information. However, they attain even higher payoffs in the game with one-way talk by choosing the desired coordinated outcome following truthful announcements, which deviates from the theoretical equilibrium.