Study Finds That Children Understand Game Theory
Game theory is regarded as an advanced algorithm used by computer scientists, economists, philosophers and politicians to further understand the interactions we observe every day. Game theory can be used to predicts events such as trade agreements between two countries or economic trends. The theory has many advanced applications, and to some extent is thought of as a learned concept. However, in recent studies it has been proven that children as young as 10 can understand Game Theory and apply it to real world situations. Experts from Yale, Harvard and Princeton developed an experiment, essentially a simplified version of the prisoners dilemma, and presented it to a group of 5th and 6h grade students. The game was essentially a bargaining game in which each child, who remained anonymous to their partner, is given the opportunity to either push 3 coins to their partner or pull 1 coin to themselves. Those who chose to push are called “cooperators” and those who pull are “defectors”. It was found that when the children knew they were going to interact with the same partner in the future they were more likely to cooperate. Similarly, if they knew that their partner had defected, and taken the 1 coin for themselves, in the past, they were less likely to cooperate with that person in the future. Generally speaking, the children overwhelming chose to cooperate, and create the largest payoff for both players in the game. Another observation that was made was that after asking each child’s parent to comment on their kid’s behavior it was clear that the children with behavioral issues were less likely to cooperate and less likely to forgive a partner who did not cooperate with them.
It is very interesting to see how humans have such an innate understanding of Game Theory. Though the understanding is at an extremely basic level, it is clear that even children are able to determine that there exists a nash equilibrium (in this case, both players cooperating). Though in some cases there were children that would not cooperate, there was an overwhelming majority that understood the benefit of doing so. This natural ability for us to strategize and reach equilibrium is the reason Game Theory is so effective. It develops a way for experts to predict the decisions of the “players” in various situations, based on the costs and benefits of their potential decisions.
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/10/13/study-finds-children-understand-game-theory/