Using Game Theory to Help Children Think Life Is Not “Unfair”
When siblings fight for something in common, they always think life is not fair. When one of the siblings get more snacks than the other, the other one would say it’s not fair. When both of the siblings run to hit the elevator button, the one who doesn’t hit it would think it’s not fair. There are many cases that seem unfair to children, especially for younger kids. However, this phenomenon is very common among kids. When humans are younger, they tend to measure fairness by precision. Just like children’s fighting, kids think fairness means they get the same amount of objects, same amount of attention and same amount of love. Nevertheless, there are also many situations when it’s hard or impossible for parents to treat their kids absolutely equally. For example, in the elevator case, when one of the children hit the button, the other one is unable to hit it again. Moreover, only one kid can get the first goodnight kiss every evening. Then how can parents help their kids to think differently that life is fair? Game theory can change children’s perspectives psychologically.
The article mentions many different strategies that parents can use in order to lead their children to think differently. The strategy “I cut, you pick” states that parents should divide the jobs for children. In the case of buying a cake, parents can let one of the children pick a cake and let the other cut the cake. The strategy “Random Dictator” is to draw the children’s names randomly and to let the one whose name is picked make the final decision. From all of the strategies, we can see that the main idea is to let both kids think their payoff is the best response. When parents use game theory and establish Nash Equilibrium in the end, both of the children will have the best responses for themselves. Therefore, they wouldn’t think the situation is unfair anymore because they both get what they want. This is an application of game theory on psychology and there are many other fields that also need game theory to solve problems.
Reference: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/when-a-child-thinks-life-is-unfair-use-game-theory/?_r=0