Social Dilemmas and Game Theory
This article discussed the psychological idea of “Social Dilemmas” of which, game theory can be applied. A social dilemma is a task in which the non-cooperative payoff for a player exceeds the cooperative payoff. However, if most people in the network fail to cooperate, everyone suffers. The author provided the example of littering, citing that the consequences to an individual for littering are not enough to prevent the action (perhaps it is a burden to keep the trash and throwing it on the ground provides a higher payoff). However, if everyone in the network decides to litter, the entire population faces much more severe negative payoffs. (Increased taxes to pay for clean up efforts/harming the environment etc).
The idea behind social dilemmas apply to game theory. Let us create a 2 player game where player 1 is the individual, and player 2 is the rest of the population. The options for each player are litter, or not to litter. Provided the general population chooses not to litter, the payoff for A is higher to litter than not to litter. However, if the general population chooses to litter, the payoff for A not to litter is the same as it is to litter, as the population has already created enough of a negative consequence for the player to change anything. In this payoff matrix, rational choice theory decides that each individual will decide upon the non-cooperative route. People are bad predictors of expected utility in the future, and as inherently self interested individuals, it makes sense for us at the time to do what is most beneficial to us alone. However, doing so will hurt the entirety of the population down the road.
Social dilemmas apply on a much broader spectrum than littering. The same concept applies to voting, (one vote won’t change an election, but nobody voting will), resource allocations, and overpopulation. Social dilemmas will continue to be a problem as their negative consequences are not apparent until it is too late.It can be studied on a further scale how rational decisions are made, and what can be done to improve people’s cooperation.
Source:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/bfr3/blogs/asp/2012/02/so-what-is-your-dilemma.html