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Game Theory for Children

People make decisions every day and each decision is based on different standards. Some decisions are based on individual’s values, and some depend on the choices made by other people they interact with. According to Networks, Markets, and Crowds by David Easley and Jon Kleinberg, game theory is designed to address situation in which the result of a person’s choice depends not only on how he or she choose out of several options but also on the decisions made by people he or she is interacting with. Game theories are applied not only in games but in other non-game contexts such as pricing, bidding, choosing a route on the internet and so on. They are also used in various areas such as economics, politics, psychology, biology etc. In every case, decision maker’s outcome varies depending on other people’s choices. An example of game theory is prisoner’s dilemma, a situation in which two prisoners have two options to choose from and depending on which decision they make result in four different outcomes. There exists the most ideal outcome of the four results, and it is up to the prisoners to consider what decision the other person will make.

Game theory also takes place in our daily life, even for children. The Game Theorists’s Guide to Parenting: How the Science of Strategic Thinking Can Help You Deal with the Toughest Negotiators You Know—Your Kids, by Paul Raeburn and Kevin Zollman depicts how children apply game theory when approaching negotiation. By getting the right bargain, the children try to reduce the conflict to as minimum as possible. Without being taught about game theory, children figure out themselves that cooperation is a better option than conflict when they have a quarrel with their siblings. The study also mentions the importance of an authority figure that encourages children to reach a fair agreement all on their own. Another study taken about children’s cooperative networks illustrates that such negotiation seems to be intrinsic or coming from the family environment. The article was interesting in a way that it connects to the concept covered during the lecture but also reaches to examples outside societal problems and covers a more familiar and related focus. Further studies regarding game theory would be an interesting approach as such design can be observed from various unexpected domain of life.

Source : https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/game-theory-for-parents1/

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