Can You Parent Your Kids Using Game Theory?
A recent book released by Paul Raeburn and Kevin Zollman, entitled 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, seems to think so. Many unconventional parenting skills have been introduced throughout the years, from giving kids complete freedom to isolating children, but this strategy makes mathematical sense. The strategy encourages children to learn how to come to agreements on their own through fair negotiation. An article in Scientific American describes a study done by psychologist Kristina R. Olsen and Elizabeth S. Spelke. The study found children tend to share with family members or someone that had shared with them learned “through their intrinsic development or their interactions with other children” or “from their family environments.” With this, they evaluated that we tend to cooperate when we maximize our gain from the situation. Children also learn how to respond to future situations their own form of prisoner’s dilemma when they ‘tattle’ on their siblings. As the article describes both children might tell on each other the first time, but if one keeps silent the other sibling may do the same the next time around. The article encourages parents to employ this idea in other situations like cleaning up toys. They say if you encourage them both to take turns picking up and reward them, they will learn the incentive of the activity. Promoting cooperation is key in the game theory of parenting.
How does this explicitly relate to game theory? Well the children learn how to maximize their monetary gain. In the situation where a brother doesn’t tell on his sister, his sister learns she can be confident in her brother and rewards him by not telling him the next time. Here we have a Nash equilibrium. A brother doesn’t tattle on his sister, so she doesn’t tell on him. They both don’t get in trouble for the action in question, while they also gain trust in each other. Likewise, when the children have to pick up their towns, they learn the more toys they pick up the greater a chance they are rewarded. If one sees his sibling picking up more toys then him, he will have the incentive to pick up more toys so he will be rewarded as well. This is an example of a coordination game, as both siblings goal is to work together to pick up the toys the fastest. Then, they can both get ice cream. Parenting is truly a game of strategies.
Link:http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/game-theory-for-parents1/