Parsa Djalilvand
Professor Johnson
WR399
19 April 2018
Essay 4
Most people use gamification when it comes to communication with others and being in a romantic relationship or any other kinds of relationship increases the use gamification. Because people most of the time they want something in return for everything that they do, some times this can make the relationship more stronger. People always try to figure out what others are thanking before they do anything or make any move, as Paul Raeburn and Kevin Zollman said "whenever you find yourself considering what you should do in terms of how someone else might respond"(Raeburn and Zollman 2). Game theory can be both useful and harmful in many different ways. As Mike McDermot said in movie (Rounders 1998) "The key to the game is to play the man not the cards." As well as Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths said that. “In fact, what you really play is a theoretically infinite recursion” (Algorithms to Live by 231)
Game theory is applicable to almost every aspect of life. Game theory is what make people connect with each other. In romantic relationships, it is essential for both parties to trust each other and expose their vulnerability if they are going to get to romantic bliss. But this is a highly risky strategy. If you show your vulnerability and your significant other doesn’t, then you risk getting very hurt. Your best bet is to hold back on exposing your vulnerability, keep up some sort of guard and continue to be mean. In this way, nothing too awful can happen to you. It looks like what game theorists call a “dominant strategy”, the best outcome for you no matter what the other person does. You won’t get to romantic bliss, but you won’t get devastated either. Not falling in love, therefore, looks pretty wise, which somehow seems counter-intuitive, (like all the best Prisoner’s Dilemmas Perhaps the most important part of the analysis of any game is to understand the preferences of the players. What do they want out of the interaction? Nowhere is this truer than in relationships. The most fundamental part of resolving disagreements understand what your partner wants. Game theory has been applied to all sorts of situations where you might think of the actors of being a-rational. In a romantic relationship when a husband buys a flower for his wife, he wants to show her that he loves and cares for her with the act of kindness, then he expects her to do something close to what he has done for her to show that she loves him too. It is more a tit-for-tat situation. Giving and receiving are essential for a healthy relationship. It makes more reliable connection. Sometimes game theory helps the relationship but sometimes it can hurt romantic relationships, for example using an app to track one's relationships will raises the expectations of the significant other and will make every act of kindness a necessary job, and this is not a good healthy relationship as Susie Neilson mentions that, “Filling up a love tank isn’t the same as having a personal connection.” (Neilson 4)
Increasingly, companies are utilizing the science of Game Theory to help them make high risk/high reward strategic decisions in highly competitive markets and situations. The same thing happens in a friendship also, it might not look like giving and receiving but the tit-for-tat is beign used in friendship more. The tit-for-tat in friendship will hurt the friendship if we have one to expect his/her friend do something in return of a favor. As Mark Vernon says, "At this later stage in its development, social harmony is resistant to non-cooperative behavior"(Vernon 65). Modern Game Theory has been around for over 50 years old and has demonstrated an ability to generate the ideal strategic choice in a variety of different situations. "We are primates, and primates compete with one another." cooperation evolved on top of a deep-seated competitive drive. “In many ways, this is the human dilemma.” (McGowan 2) Friendship and romance can be modeled as Prisoner's dilemma too.
Game Theory principles are leveraged through the use of strategy games. These games are well-defined mathematical scenarios that encompass a set of players, a set of strategies available to those players, and a payoff specification for each combination of strategies. One simple and well-known example of a strategy game is the Prisoner’s Dilemma. "Game theory covers an incredibly broad spectrum of scenarios of cooperation and competition, but the field began with these resembling heads-up poker" (Christian and Griffiths 233) Game Theory shows itself in family relationships also. Raeburn and Zollman said that, “People pay more attention to empirical expectations, what others do, than normative expectations, what others say they should do.”(No more family drama 4) However, it has some good and some bad effects.
Game Theory is a powerful tool for predicting outcomes of a group of interacting where an action of a single person directly affects the other participating players. As Raeburn and Zollman said ''When the person doing the dividing is motivated to make the portions equally good, it's more likely that both parties will end up satisfied'' (No More Family Drama 3) The negative effect is really important to know.
Most of the times not knowing the negative effect can make misunderstanding among the people. With people using their first system meaning system 1, as Kahneman says, ''Effortless Thinking'' and Emily Esfahani Smith talks about this too, she said '' When it comes to social perception, System 1 uses shortcuts, or heuristics, to come to conclusions about another person. There are many shortcuts the mind relies on when it reads others facial expressions, body language, and intentions, and one of the most powerful ones is called the “primacy effect” and it explains why first impressions are so important… Unlike System 1, where thinking is automatic and effortless, System 2 thinking is effortful.’’ ( Mixed Signals 4) people often misjudging other people just by looking on how they talk or look, with many more other factors that people use system 1 to process them. It seems that analyzing relationships with game theory reinforces the fact that intuitive dominant strategies only exist in a perfect world.
People always try to figure out what others are thanking before they do anything or make any move, as Paul Raeburn and Kevin Zollman said "whenever you find yourself considering what you should do in terms of how someone else might respond"(Raeburn and Zollman 2).
Game theory can be both useful and harmful in many different ways. As Mike McDermot said in movie (Rounders 1998) "The key to the game is to play the man not the cards." As well as Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths said that. “In fact, what you really play is a theoretically infinite recursion” (Algorithms to Live by 231). It is really important to know these concepts and apply them in everyday life. Game theory is applicable to almost every aspect of life. Relationships that are built on a “solid, comfortable, interesting, and pleasurable bed of reality” succeed above all others. Gamification is extremely helpful for everyone. Game Theory shows that it has some good and some bad effects on relationship. Perhaps some sort of mixed strategy will be most beneficial in the game of relationships.
Work CIted
Raeburn, Paul, and Kevin Zollman. “No More Drama: The Game Theory Guide to a Happy
Family Holiday.”
Neilson, Susie. “When a Relationship Becomes a Game.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media
Company, 24 Apr. 2014, www.theatlantic.com/author/susie-neilson/.
Smith, Emily Esfahani. “Mixed Signals: Why People Misunderstand Each Other.”
The Atlantic,23 Apr, 2015, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/mixed signals-why-people-misunderstand-each-other/391053/.
Vernon, Mark. “The Meaning of Friendship by Mark Vernon”