Parenting Methods Using Game Theory
“It’s not fair!” – a common statement exclaimed by a dissatisfied child to his or her parent. Even from a young age, children practice negotiation and their approach usually depends largely on notions of fair play. Recently, Paul Raeburn and Kevin Zollman have written a book called, 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. The book details various ways to approach scenarios involving the most intense debates with kids using concepts of prisoner’s dilemma and auctioning. The different parenting methods in this book paired with classic mathematics/strategy concepts is very interesting, and it almost seems obvious that parents can negotiate with their kids these ways, but Zollman and Raeburn certainly make sense of it through different examples.
The principle of fairness emerges early on in childhood development as seen in experiments involving a children giving more resources to dolls that had been generous to others as compared with dolls that had not been generous to anyone. Children often develop generosity and understanding of fairness through their intrinsic development, family environment, and interactions with other children. Zollman and Raeburn apply prisoner’s dilemma into play in a scenario in which a parent tells his two children to clean up their toys and put them away, but neither of his kids will budge, each waiting for the other to start cleaning. In order to get the kids to cooperate and clean up their mess, Zollman recommends using prisoner’s dilemma to give them each the same reward or punishment based on their performance as a team-if one child does not clean, then the next time around, the other kid is likely to refuse to clean as well and both will be punished. Eventually, a teamwork dynamic will develop between the two siblings which results in less arguing and more cooperation for the parent.
Another interesting scenario is when children argue over who gets a bigger room or who gets to pick which movie to watch. How do you go about deciding who gets what? Zollaman and Raeburn did not exactly use the term “auctioning” in their book for this scenario, but I believe that their suggestion of having the siblings bid their chores or their allowance in order to “do business” with the other sounds like they the concept of auctioning-bidding what you think the value is.
The main takeaway from this is that parents should make sure that the benefits of cooperation are divided equally between their children because if one gains a lot more from cooperation than the other, spite will cause a loud and energy-draining argument. It is very interesting to see how some parenting methods that are used with mathematical and strategy concepts are played out such that the children are negotiating with themselves and each other in order to reach conclusion that results in the highest payoff for themselves.
Sources: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/game-theory-for-parents1/
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/how-to-make-kids-behave/