TEXTBOOK

Unit 9

UNIT 09
game theory
TEXTBOOK

UNIT OBJECTIVES
Game theory is the mathematical study of social interactions as games that have
payoffs for the players.
Traditional game theory assumes that players are rational actors, always acting in
ways that maximize their benefits. Real people are not necessarily like this.
The payoff matrix is the essential way to express a game mathematically.
In zero-sum games, a winners gains come at a losers expense.
Non-zero-sum games can include both win-win and lose-lose situations.
Strategies are the actions that players take in a game.
Payoffs are often frequency dependent; that is, they depend on how many people
are playing a particular strategy as well as how often a game is played.
Equilibrium is reached when each player has no incentive to play differently.
Game analysis changes when games are played repeatedly. This gives rise to
mixed strategies.
Game theory can provide insight into many situations, phenomena, and subjects,
including biology, sociology, and linguistics.

What accounts for TIT FOR TATs robust

success is its combination of being nice,
retaliatory, forgiving, and clear. Its niceness
prevents it from getting into unnecessary
trouble. Its retaliation discourages the
other side from persisting when defection
is tried. Its forgiveness helps restore
mutual cooperation. And its clarity makes
it intelligible to the other player, thereby
eliciting long-term cooperation.
Robert Axelrod

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Mathematics has an on-again-off-again relationship with the real world.

There are fields of mathematics that exist, more or less, solely for themselves.
Researchers in these fields are primarily motivated by the most abstract of
what-if conjectures. The field of topology is a prime example of this, as it is
known primarily for the beauty of the thinking behind its results rather than for
its connections to reality. Much of mathematics, however, has its foundation in
the happenings of the world around us. The field of game theory, in some sense,
represents the pinnacle of this type of mathematics. It can be thought of as the
mathematical study of our human interactions.
Mathematics started off as a way to apply strict, rigorous thinking to the wildly
complicated world around us. Throughout its evolution, mathematical thought
has oscillated between two alternative paths of thinking. On the one hand, it has
often been at the vanguard of quantitative science, helping to shed new light on
previously incomprehensible phenomena through the power of logical thinking.
On the other hand, it has sometimes been taken to levels of abstraction
far beyond what any pragmatic scientist would be interested in. Even in its
more applied incarnations, mathematics involves a great many simplifying
assumptions. To get anywhere, we must reduce incredibly complicated
situations from our everyday reality into problems that can be strictly defined
and rigorously analyzed. The subject of game theory provides a great example
of this mathematical reduction in action.
Games, to a mathematician, are simplified versions of situations that arise in the
course of interactions among people, or any kinds of agents. A game represents
an idealized situation that can be analyzed mathematically to shed light on how
or why certain outcomes are reached. For example, the Ultimatum Game is a
two-player situation in which one player is given an amount of money to share
with another in any proportion desired. The receiving player then can choose
either to accept or to decline the givers offer. If the offer is accepted, both
players get their share of the money, as determined by the giver. If the receiver
declines, no one gets any money. This represents a vastly simplified model of
a business negotiation. As we will see later in this unit, this simple game has
far-reaching and sometimes surprising implications for how humans judge the
importance of justice and equality.
Most games have many simplifying assumptions, as is evident throughout
this discussion, but the one that provides the foundation for all others is the
assumption that players act rationally. The classic assumption is that a rational
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player will always act in a way that seems to maximize personal benefit.
This assumption of rationality is what allows the mathematical analysis of
games to work. If the people playing a game do not behave rationally, then
the results of any game-theory-supported analysis may be less relevant.
Nonetheless, the conclusions that are obtained, even under these idealized
assumptions, can be useful. Interestingly, an important use of game theory
has been to probe the limits of rationality. As we shall see in our study of the
Ultimatum Game, there are multiple concepts of what is rational, in addition to
the one based on maximizing profit.
One of the most interesting conclusions reached in game theory is that rational
actions by both players can result in situations in which both players are worse
off. The primary example of this is the Prisoners Dilemma, which we will see in
more detail later on in this unit.
In this unit we will examine the mathematical analysis of games, beginning with
a bit of the history and some of the motivations behind the fields development.
From there we will examine a few simple games in order to illustrate the basic
terminology and concepts. We will then move on to more substantial games,
such as the Prisoners Dilemma and the Hawks and Doves game. We will
examine the various types of solutions and equilibria that exist for these games,
and we will see how these elements change, depending on whether a game is
played once or more than once. In iterated and multi-player games, we will see
how the payoff a player can expect from using a particular strategy depends on
the strategies that others employ and how frequently they do so. Along the way,
we will see how game theory can help us understand the processes of evolution,
including the evolution of language. Finally, we will see how analyzing abstract
games applies to real-life situations, such as business transactions, language
development, and avoiding nuclear war.

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Games People Play

Zero-Sum
Minimize the Worst-Case Scenario

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

Mathematicians attempt to analyze types of interactions by treating them as
games in which players use strategies to obtain payoffs.
Games like checkers and chess are games of perfect information; the board
shows both players all the information needed to make the right decision.
Games like poker are games of imperfect information; no player has enough
information (the other players cards are hidden) to make a guaranteed right
decision.
Games have appeared throughout history, and in many different cultures, as a
form of entertainment and education. The first mathematical analyses of certain
games occurred in the 1700s, centered around the card game Le Her, but it was
not until the mid-1920s that the field of game theory was properly founded by
the multi-talented Hungarian mathematician and physicist, John von Neumann.
Von Neumann was an exceptional character and ranks among the brightest
minds of the first half of the twentieth century. He was involved in many fields,
including quantum physics, topology, computer science, and economics. He also
worked on the Manhattan Project, the top-secret effort that built the first atomic
bomb. In his leisure time, he was an avid poker player, and his interest in games
and how they work is said to have stemmed partly from this fascination. Poker
is a game in which mathematics and human nature square off. A player must
not only be good at calculating odds, but must also be able to read the other
players to tell if they are bluffing or not.
Poker players are able to bluff one another because poker is a game of
imperfect information. As a player, you know your own cards and you know
what the other players have wagered, but you do not know what cards they hold.
It is this missing information that brings excitement to the game and makes
it challenging. Many of the games we will explore in this discussion present
situations similar to those that arise in poker, in that players do not know all
of the information available and yet still must make decisions.

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Certain games of imperfect information can lead to interesting scenarios in

which players unwittingly act against their own best interests.
By contrast, chess is a game with perfect information. In a game of chess,
knowledge of the positions (i.e., the pieces and board set-up) and all historical
information regarding the moves are available to both players. Players must
use this information to formulate and modify strategies and tactics during a
match. The challenge of chess lies not in the ambiguity of not knowing what
your opponent has to work with, but rather in the extreme complexity of possible
scenarios, each requiring a good deal of analysis. Despite their differences,
poker and chess have one very important characteristic in common: both are
zero-sum games.
ZERO SUM
Zero-sum games are games in which a winners payoff is equal to a
losers loss.
Utility is an imprecise concept, but biological payoffs are measurable.
Zero-sum games are games in which one players loss is exactly equal to
another players gain. If you win a hand at poker, your winnings will add up to
the sum of your opponents losses (unless you play at a casino, where the house
takes a cut). At the end of the day, poker players (as a group) are no wealthier
or poorer than when they started. Likewise, in chess, one persons victory is
balanced by the opponents loss. Even when a chess match ends in a stalemate,
then both players are no better off than when they started-neither has gained or
lost anything, except perhaps time, but that is not taken into account.
Not all situations in life, or game theory, are zero-sum situations, however.
Two notable examples are business transactions and arms races. In an arms
race, two or more nations compete to build the most-and the most destructiveweapons possible. This is a situation in which there are many outcomes that
leave all players worse off than when they started. If they invest heavily in
weapons, but then never use them, they have squandered a good deal of their
resources and are poorer for it. Also, if the nations use their weapons and go to
war, there is much squandering of resources, and all are worse off than before.
In business transactions, both parties exchange something for something that
they find more valuable. If you trade ten dollars for a hat, you have obviously
decided that the hat is more valuable to you than your ten dollars
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(or, at least, equally valuable). Likewise, your ten dollars is more valuable
than the hat to the hat-seller. This idea of relative value is what economists
call utility. It is through increased or decreased utility that non-zero-sum
arrangements are possible.
Utility, however, has proved to be a rather controversial concept. When game
theory is applied to biology, or evolution, the concept of utility comes through in
the term biological fitness. In this context, game theory measures payoffs in
terms of reproductive success-the objective number of offspring that a player
leaves behind to carry on a genetic legacy.
MINIMIZE THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO
The minimax theorem, attributable to Von Neumann and Morgenstern,
states that players seek the strategy that minimizes their maximum loss.
Von Neumann focused the bulk of his research on zero-sum games. He and
economist Oskar Morgenstern established the field of game theory with the
publication of their book The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,
which was primarily an analysis of the zero-sum situation. Von Neumann and
Morgenstern worked from the fundamental assumption that players always
act in a way that increases their utility-that is, they always implement the
strategy that they perceive will bring them the greatest reward. This is the
classic definition of rational, in the context of game theory. Furthermore, Von
Neumann showed that in any two-player, zero-sum, game, there will always
be a best, or optimal, strategy for each player. This will be the strategy that
maximizes the minimum possible gain, or utility, dependent on what the other
player does.
This theorem, known as the minimax theorem, set the foundation for the
mathematical study of games. It states that there is always a strategy that a
player can choose that will lead to their most-favorable worst possible outcome.
Depending on the specific rules of the game, that outcome might not be better
than that of another player, but it will be better than the alternatives, provided
the other player is playing in a similar fashion. For instance, even in a game
as complex as chess, there exists an outcome that should happen every time,
provided both players play perfectly. This means that, theoretically, one of the
three possible outcomes of chess-a white win, a black win, or a draw-should
be the right outcome if both players play perfectly. The game is so complex,

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however, that the strategies that each person should employ to produce this
ideal outcome are unknown.
An easier example to consider is the game of tic-tac-toe (TTT). A good TTT
player can never be beaten. A good player, given the first move, will always
take a corner square, and any rational opponent will then take the center
square. Play continues from this point, with the players making the moves that
ensure that they will not lose, yet that also leave their best winning options
open. Because of the layout and the rules of TTT, this means that when two
good players play each other, the result will always be a tie. This is the right
outcome, provided no one makes a mistake.
One way to analyze the game progression is through the use of a game tree.
A game tree provides a systematic way to lay out all sequences of moves in a
game in visual format. Each move is represented by a node, whose branches
represent all the possible countermoves. Even for a game as simple as TTT, the
game tree gets very large, as there are over 300,000 (9!) possible sequences of
moves and countermoves that must be taken into account.

1150

Now that weve been introduced to some of the general concepts and terms that
will be used in our discussion of game theory, lets turn our attention to a few
specific games and analyses.
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9.3

Piece of Cake
A Penny Saved...

PIECE OF CAKE
Cake division is a very simple zero-sum game, modeled with a 2 x 2
payoff matrix.
If each player is greedy, we assume that each will choose the strategy with
the best worst-case scenario.
Equilibrium is reached when both players have no incentive to change their
strategies; these can be considered the best strategies.
Lets start by looking at a simple situation that can be modeled as a game.
Suppose that two children at a birthday party both want to have the last piece
of cake. If one child gets it, the other will be resentful, and even if an adult
intervenes to split the cake in two, one child will inevitably complain that the
others share is larger. This conundrum can be avoided by letting one child cut
the cake and letting the other child have first choice of the pieces. This seems
to be an intuitively fair way to solve the problem. We can put this intuition on
firmer footing, however, using the techniques of game theory.
To model this situation as a game, we have to make a few simplifying
assumptions. First, the child who is to cut the cake, who well call the cutter,
has a variety of choices of how to make the cut, but we can simplify things by
recognizing that the real decision is simply whether or not to attempt to cut the
cake fairly. In this model, we reduce the cutters choices to just two: namely, cut
evenly or cut unevenly. The chooser has only two possible actions, of course:
choose the piece perceived to be larger or the one that seems smaller. Finally,
we must assume that both children are completely selfish, or rational. That is,
they always act in a way that gives them as much cake as possible.
We can organize this information into a matrix that enables us to see and
analyze the various possible outcomes.

NOTE: The first value in each cell is the cutters payoff, and the second is the
choosers payoff. We will follow this convention of listing the row players payoff
first throughout the unit.

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Chooser
Choose larger

piece of cake

Cutter

CONTINUED

Cut evenly

The last piece of cake

Cut unevenly

Choose smaller

( , (( , (
( , (( , (

In this scheme, the cutter chooses the row of the outcome and the chooser
chooses the column. For example, if the cutter chooses to cut evenly and the
chooser chooses the larger piece, then the cutter will get half minus a crumb
and the chooser will get half plus a crumb, which is the outcome represented
in the upper left cell of the table. Allowing for the difference of a crumb is
simply a way to acknowledge that actually cutting a cake evenly is extremely
difficult.
Now, being selfish, the cutter will choose the action that promises to bring
him the most cake regardless of what the chooser chooses. Cutting the cake
unevenly creates the possibility of getting the larger piece, but it also opens the
door for the chooser to thwart this effort. In other words, the cutters maximum
payoff in choosing to cut unevenly is the large piece, and his minimum payoff in
this case is the smaller piece.
If the cutter chooses to cut evenly, however, his maximum payoff is about half
of the cake, and his minimum payoff is also about half of the cake. So, of the
cutters two choices, the one that has the least downside-or, in other words,
the maximum minimum-is the one he should choose. Consequently, in this
situation, he should choose to cut the piece of cake evenly.
The chooser seeks to do the same thing, make the choice that maximizes her
benefit. In this case, if the cutter cuts evenly, the choosers best option is to
pick the half plus a crumb. Notice that even though both children implement
their best strategy, one still comes out slightly advantaged over the other. This
common feature of games is summed up in the following statement: You know,
the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.1 Games do not have to be fair.
The choices that the cutter and chooser had to make in the above example
are known as pure strategies. This simply means that the players play the
game using the same strategy every time; deviating from the strategy gains
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piece of cake
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them nothing and could potentially end up harming them. This idea of a best
strategy-in the sense that deviation from it increases the chance of reaching a
less-desirable result-is known as an equilibrium.
A nice example of equilibrium is the case of a three-way duel (sometimes called
a truel). Lets say that person A is an excellent shot, able to hit the target
100% of the time; person B is a great shot, with a 90% success rate; and person
C is a terrible shot, striking the target a mere 20% of the time.
90%

2396

100%

20%

Assuming that each person can shoot only once, the best strategy for each in
this case is basically: shoot the person most dangerous to you. If each player
adopts this strategy, then A should shoot at B and B should shoot at A, as each of
them is the others most imminent threat. Person C should shoot at A, because
there is a tiny chance that B will miss, but there is no chance that A will miss.
The outcome, if all players implement their equilibrium strategies, is that

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Person C will be the winner of the contest, the one left standing. This example
demonstrates how the conclusions of game theory can sometimes be counterintuitive.
A PENNY SAVED...
Matching pennies, in its one-off form, is an example of a game in which
there is no clear best strategy.
Playing multiple rounds of matching pennies does have a clear equilibrium.
To get a better sense of how equilibrium works, lets look at a game that has
no clear best strategy: matching pennies. In this game, two players, called
Mixed and Matched, simultaneously place one penny each on a table, either
heads up or heads down. If the two coins are matching, then Matched gets to
keep them both; if the two coins are not matching, then Mixed gets them both.
We can summarize the situation with the following payoff matrix:

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Mixed

Play heads
Play tails

Matched
Play heads
(-1, 1)
(1, -1)

Play tails
(1, -1)
(-1, 1)

We can see from this table that if Mixed plays heads and Matched also plays
heads, then Mixed loses a penny and Matched gains a penny. Remember, in
this game both players put their coins down at the same time, so neither has an
advantage in knowing what to pick. Notice also that this is indeed a zero-sum
situation-whatever Mixed loses is gained by Matched, and vice versa. If this
game were to be played just once, neither Mixed nor Matched would have any
clue as to what the other was going to play, so the choice between heads and
tails would be completely random. Therefore, unlike the cake game discussed
earlier in which each player had a definite best strategy, there is no one
strategy that beats all others for a single round of matching pennies.
The plot thickens, so to speak, when multiple rounds are played; this is what
game theorists call an iterated game. If the two players were to play multiple
rounds, then playing a pure strategy of heads every time or of tails every time
would definitely put a player at a disadvantage. For instance, if Matched noticed
that Mixed always plays heads, then she should play heads as well and win
every round.
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1195

A pure strategy is not the best bet for either side in this situation. Ideally, each
player would like to keep the other player guessing as to the next play. The
most intuitive, and best, way to accomplish this is to play randomly. Random
play is an example of a mixed strategy. Lets look at a modified table that
includes this new strategy option. Note that the payoff values in the table also
must change a bit in meaning. Whereas previously we were concerned with the
payoff of just a single round of play, we are now considering iterated games and
mixed strategies, and the payoffs must represent averages per round. Playing
randomly results in an average payoff of zero per round. Note that, because
this is still a zero-sum situation, if one player gets zero, so must the other.
Matched
Mixed

Play heads
Play tails
Play randomly

Play heads
(-1, 1)
(1, -1)
(0, 0)

Play tails
(1, -1)
(-1, 1)
(0, 0)

Play randomly
(0, 0)
(0, 0)
(0, 0)

Now, each player has a choice of how to play this iterated game-pure heads,
pure tails, or randomly. Using the logic developed in the preceding section,
Mixed should choose the strategy that ensures the maximum minimum, and
Matched, from his perspective, should do the same. This means that Mixed
should choose to play randomly, and so should Matched, and both of them
should expect to make nothing from the game. Playing randomly in this case
means playing heads and tails with equal probability. Doing this means that the
game is at equilibrium: neither player has anything to gain by deviating from the
chosen strategy if the other player does not deviate. Not every equilibrium in an
iterated game must be composed of equal probabilities, however. The precise
probabilities depend on the specific payoffs of the game.
In this analysis, we assume that playing randomly means that the odds of a
50
player playing heads or playing tails are
. If this were not true, then the
50

opposing player could statistically recognize a bias towards either heads or tails
and adjust her play accordingly to take advantage of this. In a scenario such as
this, the payoffs for playing randomly would no longer be (0,0), but rather the
product of the pure strategy payoffs, (-1, 1) for example, and the proportion of
heads or tails played. For example, if out of 100 games, Mixed plays 60% heads,
then Matched should also play 60% heads and expect to have an average payoff
of 0.1 per round as opposed to the zero that would be expected if both players
play heads and tails with equal probability. Conversely, Mixed should expect to
lose 0.1 per round, on average.
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We have until now been concerned with zero-sum games; whatever the winner
wins, the loser has to lose. However, many situations in life, and, hence, the
games that model these situations, are not zero-sum. These are situations in
which the combined outcome can be greater than or less than zero. In other
words, some situations are win-win, and some situations are lose-lose. One of
the most famous non-zero-sum games is the Prisoners Dilemma.

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PRISONERS DILEMMA

Trust No One
Dj Vu

TRUST NO ONE
The Prisoners Dilemma is a classic example of a non-zero-sum game.
The equilibrium in Prisoners Dilemma is not the optimum solution.
The RAND Corporation, located in Santa Monica, California, is the original
think-tank. It was founded after World War II to be a center of national
security and global policy ideas and analysis. Whereas today it advises many
nations on a variety of issues, its initial focus was national defense. Game
theory was one of the early pursuits of RAND thinkers, and in 1950 two RAND
scientists, Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher, framed what would become one of
the most fascinating games of all time, the Prisoners Dilemma.
The basic game is set up like this: imagine that you and your friend are caught
robbing a bank. Upon being apprehended you are immediately separated so
that you do not have time to communicate with each other. Each of you is taken
to a separate cell for interrogation. If you and your buddy cooperate (C) with
each other-that is, say nothing to the cops-each of you will get only a year in jail,
known as the reward payoff, R.

1196

Your Buddy
C
You

C
D

(R, R)

If you both rat on each other, or defect (D), to use the game theorists
terminology, you will both get three years in prison, known as the punishment
payoff, P.

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PRISONERS DILEMMA

Your Buddy
You

CONTINUED

C
D

C
(R, R)

D
(P, P)

If one of you cooperates and the other defects, the cooperator will get five years,
known as the suckers payoff, S, and the defector will get off with no jail time,
known as the temptation to defect payoff, T.

1198

You

C
D

Your Buddy
C
(R, R)
(T, S)

D
(S, T)
(P, P)

This matrix concisely expresses the game as we have described it, where T = 0,
R = 1, P = 3, and S = 5. Note that T>R>P>S. (It might be useful here to interpret
the is greater than sign to mean is better than, because the values actually
represent negatives-years spent in jail.)
First lets consider why this is not a zero-sum game. Looking at each cell, we
can tell that none of the payoffs for you and your buddy sum to zero. In fact,
all of them result in some net jail time for one or both of you, although some
outcomes are more favorable than others. For instance, if both of you cooperate,
the total time served by the two of you will be two years, which is as close to
win-win as this situation can get (after all, you did just rob a bank). If both of
you defect, then the total jail time for the two of you will be six years, a lose-lose
scenario that is a good deal worse than the best-case scenario. The other two
scenarios result in a total of five years of jail time served between the two of
you. So, if you could only agree with your buddy that both of you will keep quiet,
as a team youll be better off. The dilemma comes from the fact that neither you
nor your buddy has any incentive to do this.
You have no idea whether or not your buddy is going to cooperate. Even if you
have discussed a situation like this with him beforehand, you cannot be sure that
he wont betray you. As a rational being, you are going to make the decision that
minimizes your potential downside, or your personal maximum penalty. If you
choose to cooperate with your buddy, the maximum penalty you could receive is
five years, and your best-case scenario is a one-year prison sentence. However,
if you choose to defect, your maximum penalty would be three years, and there
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is a chance that you could get off with no jail time. Your rational buddy is faced
with the same set of options and the same reasoning. As a rational being, you
will choose to defect and so will your buddy, and these actions result in the loselose scenario.
What is so interesting in the Prisoners Dilemma is that it is an example in
which the equilibrium solution is not the same as the optimal solution. The
equilibrium solution, remember, is the state in which neither player has
anything to gain by switching strategies as long as the other player also doesnt
switch. The optimal solution is the scenario in which the greatest good, or
utility, is realized. In the Prisoners Dilemma the greatest good, on the whole,
comes about when both players cooperate. This scenario is unstable, however,
because both players have an incentive to switch strategy. On the other hand,
if both players defect, neither has anything to gain by changing strategy if the
other doesnt, so the defect-defect solution is stable. Game theorists would say
that the defect strategy is strictly dominant over the cooperate strategy as long
as T>R>P>S.
When versions of the Prisoners Dilemma are posed to actual people, the results
do not always match the mathematical predictions. Real people do not always
act rationally, and even if they did, it is very rare that a game is ever played just
once in real life. As an example, lets say that you decide to cooperate, but your
buddy decides to defect. After you serve your sentence, your buddy offers to
rob another bank with you to help you get back on your feet (with friends like
this, who needs enemies?!). You agree, and both of you get caught again. This
situation is not exactly like the first time you got caught, however, because
now each of you has a reputation, a track record. Your buddy might realize
that you have already cooperated once and that if you cooperate again, and he
chooses to cooperate this time also, then both of you will be better off. On the
other hand, you might have revenge on your mind and decide that because your
buddy burned you the last time, you will retaliate this time. These kinds of
considerations make the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma more complicated than
the one-shot version.

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DJ VU

PRISONERS DILEMMA
CONTINUED

The Iterated Prisoners Dilemma admits a wide variety of equilibrium

outcomes, depending on the mix of strategies adopted by the players.
In computer tournaments, strategies that are neither always generous nor
always punitive tend to fare the best.
If the Prisoners Dilemma is to be played over and over again, it is best that
the number of times that it is to be played is not pre-determined; otherwise,
everyone should just defect, as in the one-round version. The reasoning goes
like this: you should always defect in your last game because there is no
chance for retaliation. Knowing that your buddy will also think of this strategy,
you should always defect in your second-to-last game as well. This thinking
naturally extends all the way back to the first move, so everyone should just
always defect. If, however, players play without knowledge of when the game
will end, strategies other than always defect become viable, even dominant.
One such alternative strategy is the random strategy, in which a player randomly
cooperates or defects, with no consideration given to what has happened in
previous rounds. Another strategy is retaliation: always do to your opponent
what she did to you the last time.
There are many strategies, some of which are clearly better than others, and
others of which are rather obscure in their efficacy. To put all of these strategies
to the test, Robert Axelrod of the University of Michigan organized a tournament
in the mid-1980s in which different Iterated Prisoners Dilemma strategies
competed against each other over the course of many rounds. The winning
strategy was to be the one with the lowest accumulated jail time in the end.
One might suspect that always-defecting would still be the best strategy in
such a tournament. If two players played five rounds of the always-defecting
strategy, their individual scores at the end of five rounds would be 15 years.
(In our score-keeping, lower scores are better).
Results of Pure Defect vs. Pure Defect
P1 STRATEGY DDDDD
P2 STRATEGY DDDDD
P1 PAYOFF = PPPPP = 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 15 years
P2 PAYOFF = PPPPP = 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 15 years

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On the other hand, if two players who were always-cooperating played each
other for five rounds, each players accumulated score would be five years.

PRISONERS DILEMMA
CONTINUED

Results of Pure Cooperate vs. Pure Cooperate

P1 STRATEGY CCCCC
P2 STRATEGY CCCCC
P1 PAYOFF = RRRRR = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5 years
P2 PAYOFF = RRRRR = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5 years
So, there is clearly something to be gained by not defecting all the time if you
can get into a repeated mutual cooperation situation, such as that shown above.
The question is: how can you get into such a situation, especially when a Pure
Defect strategy will dominate a Pure Cooperate strategy?
Results of Pure Defect vs. Pure Cooperate
P1 STRATEGY DDDDD
P2 STRATEGY CCCCC
P1 PAYOFF = TTTTT = 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 0 years
P2 PAYOFF = SSSSS = 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 25 years
Analysis of the strategies that fared best in Axelrods tournament indeed
provided answers to this question. Some were very complicated, based on
analyzing specific sequences of prior moves to prescribe the next sequence of
moves. Others were very simple, such as the Tit-For-Tat (TFT) strategy. As its
name implies, TFT relies simply on doing to your opponent what he last did to
you. So, if your opponent cooperates on the first turn, then you should cooperate
on the second turn. This can lead to the nice always-cooperating cycle if two
TFT players start off cooperating, while protecting the player from getting too
many suckers payoffs. However, TFT can also lead to the always-defecting
situation, if two TFT players start off by defecting.
The best strategies were variants of Tit-For-Tat with Forgiveness (TFTWF). This
strategy is basically the same as regular TFT except that some small percentage
of the time, you forgive your opponents prior defection and do not mimic it. This
provides a mechanism for breaking the always-defecting trap.
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9.4

Results of Tit-For-Tat-with-Forgiveness vs. Tit-For-Tat:

P1 (TFTWF) DDCCC
P2 (TFT)
DDDCC
P1 PAYOFF = PPSRR = 3 + 3 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 13 years
P2 PAYOFF = PPTRR = 3 + 3 + 0 + 1 + 1 = 8 years
Note that in this particular match, TFTWF loses to TFT. Remember, however,
that the tournament consists of many matches against many different
strategies. TFT will invariably get caught in always defecting cycles,
whereas TFTWF will be able to escape these, providing an advantage over TFT in
the long run.
Most of the successful strategies in Axelrods tournament were based on some
amount of altruistic behavior. It was a stunning mathematical indication that
aggression and vindictiveness do not always prevail. It seems that a truly selfish
strategy, in the sense that it is designed to maximize ones own benefit, must
include some element of forgiveness. In fact, Axelrod found that successful
strategies had four common traits, which he described anthropomorphically in
this way:

First, the strategy should be nice. This means that it will not defect unless
its opponent defects first.

Second, the strategy should retaliate against defectors to avoid being

exploited by always defectors.

Third, the strategy should be forgiving. After retaliating against a defection,

it should begin to cooperate again as soon as its opponent cooperates.

Fourth, the strategy should not try to score more than its opponent-it should
be non-envious. This stems from the fact that the strength of cooperation
lies in the reality that both parties benefit equally from it.

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9.4

These traits are fascinating if not heartwarming, showing us that cooperation

and altruism really do have a place in a world as starkly defined as that of the
Iterated Prisoners Dilemma. This suggests that studying games can help us to
understand some of the behavioral aspects of our natural world, such as why
certain types of animals live in cooperative societies and others live as solitary
aggressors. This world of conflicting living strategies is characterized by the
game called the Hawks and Doves, and it is to this game that we will next turn
our attention.

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9.5

A Lover, Not a Fighter

Might Might Not Always Make Right
The Nitty Gritty

A LOVER, NOT A FIGHTER

Hawks and Doves is a rudimentary model of game theory in a biological
context in which creatures compete for resources by being either aggressive
or passive.
Aggressive players beat passive players, but they incur costs when they
compete against other aggressive players.
In the Prisoners Dilemma, the players have a choice of whether or not to
cooperate with one another or to defect. We saw that what the players should
dothat is, their best strategies-depend on whether they will be playing just
once or many times. If they are to play only once, they should both defect, even
though it would be better overall for them to cooperate. If they are to play many
times, however, it behooves them to try different mixes of cooperation and
defection. Axelrods tournament study demonstrated that, over the course of
numerous games, players who play pure strategies can be beaten by players
who choose mixed strategies.
We can extend this thinking to the natural world if we imagine the competition
for survival to be a tournament. The many rounds of this tournament
correspond to the daily struggles that certain species face for survival. In the
natural world, all species compete for resources using wildly varying strategies.
The strategies that are most successful in the long run are the ones that survive
to be passed along to offspring.
Strategies for survival in the natural world do vary, but broad trends are
discernible. For our purposes, we will simplify things greatly by limiting the
options to only two types of behavior, aggressive and passive, and well call
the actors of these behaviors Hawks and Doves respectively. Aggressive
animals will always fight over resources, whereas passive animals will not. This
is the basis for a famous game often known as Hawks and Doves, which was
first proposed by John Maynard Smith and George Price in a 1973 paper.

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The assumptions behind the game are pretty straightforward. Imagine a field
strewn with piles of food. This field is populated with animals that can behave
either passively or aggressively toward one another. The animals, or players,
compete with one another for the resource piles. For simplicitys sake, we
determine that all competitions occur between individuals, i.e., one-on-one.
The standard scenario is that one animal approaches a pile of food, and then
another animal presents a challenge for it. Furthermore, neither animal knows
the others behavioral identity until the challenge has begun. The possible
interactions are then Hawk-Hawk, Hawk-Dove, Dove-Hawk, and Dove-Dove.

Player 1

Player 2
Hawk

Dove

Hawk
Dove

Whenever a Hawk fights another Hawk, one of them wins the entire food pile,
thus getting a benefit, B. The loser gets injured, incurring a cost, C. Both B
and C can be thought of as food calories. The resource calories gained by the
winner are counted as positive, but the calories that the loser must devote to
healing are counted as negative. For the purposes of this game, we assume that
all Hawks are equal and win half of all their battles with other Hawks. Also, as
with the Prisoners Dilemma game, we are concerned only with the tendencies
established through iterative scenarios. Consequently, on average, a Hawk will
B
C
gain
calories and lose
calories in a Hawk-Hawk interaction. This average
2
2
(BC)
energy accounting can be simplified to
.
2

1200

Player 2
Hawk
Player 1

Hawk

(BC)
2

Dove

(BC)
2

Dove

When a Hawk challenges a Dove, the Dove does not fight but simply walks
away. This means that the Hawk gets the entire benefit, with no cost of fighting.
The Dove gets nothing, but also loses nothing. In Hawk-Dove and Dove-Hawk
interactions, the Hawk always gets the entire benefit, B, and the Dove always
gets nothing and loses nothing. Therefore, the Hawks average payoff is B, and
the Doves is zero.
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9.5
Player 2
Hawk
Player 1

Hawk
Dove

(BC)
2

(BC)
2

,
(0, B)

Dove
(B, 0)

Finally, when a Dove challenges a Dove, they do not fight but, rather, split the
resource evenly. Each player gets B2 without any cost to anyone.

1202

Player 2
Hawk
Player 1

Hawk
Dove

(BC)
2

(BC)
2

(0, B)

Dove
(B, 0)
B

( 2 , 2 )

Notice that this is not a zero-sum situation, because not all of the cells add up to
the same value; the Hawk-Hawk interaction yields less in total benefit than the
other three scenarios.
MIGHT MIGHT NOT ALWAYS MAKE RIGHT
Pure strategies can be a bad idea.
Now that we have a grasp of the basic circumstances of the game, lets think
about whether its better to be a Hawk or a Dove. It might seem, at first glance,
that being a Hawk is always the best idea. If we imagine that the population of
the field is nearly 100% Hawk, its hard to see how a Dove could ever survive
for very long, as it would get to eat only upon encountering another Dove. On
the other hand, if the field is nearly 100% Dove, then a single Hawk is going to
have it incredibly easy. This would lead us to think, if we had to choose between
playing Hawk and playing Dove, that we should always choose Hawk. After all,
a Hawk in an all-Dove world is going to do well, whereas a Dove in an all-Hawk
world is going to starve.
Thats the standard intuition, but lets consider the situation of the lone Dove a
little more carefully. He never loses calories, and while the Hawks are gaining
calories, they are also losing them in their fights. If these costs end up being
more than the resource benefits, then each Hawk will experience an overall
calorie loss as time goes on, while the Dove holds steady (this assumes, of
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9.5

course, that there is no cost for simply waiting around while everybody else
fights amongst themselves). After a while, the lone Dove will be doing much
better than the always-fighting Hawks. This suggests that if costs are more than
benefits, one might do well to be a Dove in an all-Hawk world.
If Doves do better in an all-Hawk environment when costs outweigh benefits,
then over time the population should shift toward all Doves. This is based on the
assumption that the most fit, the ones with the highest net calories, survive to
reproduce more often than the less fit.
One might then think that whenever costs outweigh benefits, the population will
tend to evolve into all Doves. However, a Hawk in an all-Dove environment will
do extremely well relative to the Doves, even if costs outweigh benefits. This
is because the cost becomes irrelevant if there are no other Hawks around to
inflict injuries. We would then be led to believe that the all-Dove scenario is not
stable, even when costs outweigh benefits.
The idea of a pure strategys stability is an important one. In our analysis, we
saw that neither the all-Hawk nor the all-Dove strategy is stable when the costs
outweigh the benefits. This means that either situation can be infiltrated by
the opposing strategy. Note that this is not true when the benefits outweigh
the costs. Such a world would be driven towards the all-Hawk state, as a
lone Dove would gain nothing while the Hawks gained something from each
fight. This suggests to us that the relationship between costs and benefits has
something to do with which state will be stable. Furthermore, we can conclude
that because neither the all-Hawk nor the all-Dove state is stable, if there is to
be a stable state, it must lie somewhere between the pure states. This means
that if one has a choice as to whether to be a Hawk or a Dove, it would be best
to adopt a mixture of the strategies-but what mixture? Remember that on the
level of each individual confrontation, you have to choose your identity, whether
to be a Hawk or a Dove, before you know the identity of your opponent. What
percentage of the time should you be a Hawk and what percentage of the time
should you be a Dove? With just a little algebra, we can find these percentages:

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9.5

THE NITTY GRITTY

The optimum mix of passive and aggressive behavior depends on the exact
values of the costs and benefits.
To start, lets represent the pure Hawk strategy as H, the pure dove strategy as D,
and the Mixed strategy as S. The payoffs for these would be as follows:
E(H,S) = payoff of pure Hawk versus the Mixed strategy
E(D,S) = payoff of pure Dove versus the Mixed strategy
Lets define p as the probability that the Mixed player plays Hawk in a given
interaction; then the expression 1-p represents the probability that the Mixed
player will play Dove. The expected average payoff of H vs. S, E(H,S), will be
composed of part of the Hawk-Hawk and part of the Hawk-Dove payoffs.
E(H,S) = (probability that S plays Hawk) x (payoff of Hawk-Hawk) + (probability
that S plays Dove) x (payoff of Hawk-Dove)
E(H,S) =

p(BC)
2

+ (1-p)B

The expected average payoff for D vs. S, E(D,S), can be found in a similar manner:
E(D,S) = (probability that S plays Hawk) x (payoff of Dove-Hawk) + (probability that
S plays Dove) x (payoff of Dove-Dove)
E(D,S) = p(0) + (1-p)(

B
2

Ss optimum mix will be when both H and D do equally well against it. This means
that S has nothing to gain by skewing the mix towards more Hawk or more Dove
than prescribed by p and (1-p) respectively. In other words, the optimal mix will
be the value of p when E(H,S) = E(D,S).
E(H,S) = E(D,S)
p(BC) + (1-p)B = p(0) + (1-p)( B )
2

Solving this for p yields the percentage of time that S should play Hawk, which
B
turns out to be . Note that this percentage is entirely dependent on the benefitC
to-cost ratio.

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9.5

All of this means that were we to study the population of our field for a long
time, we would find that the ratio of benefits given by food piles to costs incurred
by fighting would determine the percentage of time that a Mixed animal should
play Hawk or Dove. If, for some reason, the system falls out of balance, as
when a group of players decides to play Hawk more often than they should, then
there will be a clear advantage for others to play Dove more than they should.
These counteracting forces would then drive the system back to the appropriate
average ratio of Hawks to Doves.
The evolutionary progress of our field, like the process of Axelrods tournament,
shows that pure strategies are neither always stable, nor always optimal. The
most successful strategies are usually mixed strategies. In terms of human
behavior, this suggests that to be successful, we should not be too quarrelsome,
nor should we be pushovers. Additionally, we should be forgiving at times, and
at other times we should not hesitate to retaliate against wrongdoers. These
conclusions are all well and good in theory, but how do they play out in real life
with actual human beings? In our next section, we will examine what happens
when game theorys predictions are put to the test in different human cultures.

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DIFFERENT CULTURES

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9.6

No One Said Life Was Fair

Get Real

NO ONE EVER SAID LIFE WAS FAIR

Games can be used as a sociologists measuring stick to quantify notions of
fairness in human cultures.
The Ultimatum Game gives one player a sum of resources to be shared with
another player, who can accept or reject the offer.
What does fair really mean? Does it mean the same thing to everybody?
Sociologists have been able to explore these questions using the techniques of
game theory. Games can serve as one of the essential tools of the sociologist,
much as litmus paper serves as a tool for the chemist or a telescope serves as a
tool for the astronomer.
First, lets clarify the difference between the terms rational and fair.
A rational action, as we have defined it, is one in which a player chooses the
strategy with the best chance of producing the most personal benefit, without
regard to what happens to the other player. Being fair, on the other hand, takes
into account a whole host of other factors, including cultural norms, experience
in market transactions, and experience with cooperation. In work done at the
turn of the twenty-first century, researchers found that the concept of what is
fair ranges widely, depending on whos playing. They reached this conclusion
after watching how people from 17 different small-scale societies, ranging from
hunter-gatherers to nomadic herders to sedentary farmers, played in a variety
of cooperative games, such as the Ultimatum Game and the Public Goods Game.
In the Public Goods Game, players are asked to contribute some amount of
money to a communal pot, which will be subsequently increased, based on
how much everyone gives. In the Ultimatum Game, one player is given a sum
of money or other valuable resource and is instructed to share it with another
player. The first player decides how much to offer and the second player decides
whether or not to accept the offer. If the second player rejects the offer, neither
player gets any reward, or benefit.

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Lets examine the Ultimatum Game in a bit more detail. Player 1, the Offerer,
can offer any amount that he or she chooses. For the sake of simplicity, lets say
that the Offerer can choose to offer a high amount (H) or a low amount (L). If he
offers H, then he will be left with L if Player 2 accepts the offer, and vice versa.
Player 2, the Receiver, always has the choice of accepting or rejecting the offer.
With these simplified assumptions we can create a matrix:

Offerer

Offer High
Offer Low

Receiver
Accept Offer
(L, H)
(H, L)

Reject Offer
(0, 0)
(0, 0)

It should be evident from this matrix that a rational Receiver will never reject
an offer. From the rational Receivers point of view, receiving L, even if L is of
very low value, is better than getting nothing. A rational Offerer will pick the
strategy corresponding to the row with the largest minimum payoff. Both rows
in this case have the same minimum, 0, so the Offerer should then choose the
strategy with the best potential payoff, which will be to Offer Low. In fact, the
rational Offerer should offer the smallest amount possible, because the rational
Receiver accepts any offer.
GET REAL
The notion of what is fair depends on cultural norms.
When actual people play this game, however, the results vary widely and are
never in line with the rational model. The study found that average offers across
all societies range from 25% of the total to more than 50%. Furthermore, many
real players will reject offers, even offers of more than 50%. What is perhaps
more illuminating is how offers and acceptances depend on the society in which
the players live.
Certain groups of people who are very economically independent, at least at the
family level, had the lowest average offers. Other groups of people who depend
on communal cooperation to gain food, such as in a whale hunt, had mean
offers very close to 50%. Still others, in societies in which gift-giving is an act of
status, had average offers above 50%. Quite surprisingly, some of these highoffer societies exhibited high rejection rates as well.

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9.6

Why would someone reject an offer? The answer relates to the psychology
inherent in reiterative games. The researchers surmised that people reject
offers that are too low because if they accepted such offers, they would develop
a reputation for accepting low offers and, consequently, no one would give them
higher offers in the future. Also, rejecting an offer turns the tables of power in
the Receivers favor. The Receiver can punish the low Offerer, who has much
more to lose in a rejection than the Receiver does. From the Receivers point of
view, it might be worth incurring the cost of losing the low offer if it discourages
the Offerer from being so stingy with future offers.
Why would anyone reject a high offer? In certain cultures, gift giving obligates
the receiver to return the favor; receivers who do not wish to be obligated to
someone else would then reject any offer that seemed to be too big a burden to
pay back. These cultural norms were thought to manifest themselves in how
people played the Ultimatum Game, as the participants sought to contextualize
their experience of the game. In other words, they often asked themselves,
What does this game remind me of? and then they adjusted their strategy to
align with their perception of the situation.
The Public Goods Game and the Ultimatum Game show that what people
perceive as being fair depends heavily on their cultural context. In these cases,
games served as tools for measuring and quantifying cultural values in the
real world. We see that the concept of fairness develops in human societies in
relation to their specific needs and values. Game theory can also be used to
examine another very human concept, that of language. We will now turn our
attention to how ideas from game theory can contribute to the explanation of
how language can arise and develop within a group.

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9.7

The Name Game

Pass It On

THE NAME GAME

Language development can be modeled as a game in which players receive
a payoff when they are in agreement about a particular word referring to a
particular object.
The payoff depends on how many players are in agreement.
Human language seems to be a large part of what makes us unique beings.
We said in the introduction to this unit that game theory can be thought of as
the mathematical study of human interactions. Language is arguably the most
fundamental of these interactions. It is, in fact, hard to imagine interactions
without language in the first place. Yet, how does a group of people agree on
which words to use for particular objects? How is this set of agreements passed
along to offspring? In 1999, in a paper written by Nowak, Plotkin, and Krakauer
at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, principles of game theory were
used to illuminate how language can develop.
Imagine a group of human ancestors, a troop of hominids, if you like. Suppose
that this group is just starting to communicate about specific objects in their
environment. Perhaps they have become concerned with communicating
specific threats or other important information more efficiently-knowing the
location of a hungry leopard or of a grove of fruit-laden trees is often critical to
survival. Each individual in the group develops an internal list of verbal signals,
or words, that are associated with objects such as leopards or fruit trees.
In order for communication to take place, a speaker makes an association
between an object and a word. A listener either has the same association or
they do not. Suppose that the speaker, upon seeing a leopard, says leopard
to the listener. If the listener has the same association, then they will
think leopard and act accordingly. If the listener does not have the same
association, then they will not understand, and there could be some negative
consequence.

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9.7

This implies that if the speaker and the listener have the same association,
then there is some sort of payoff for both of them. That payoff could be that the
listener avoids danger, or perhaps learns the location of some food. The payoff
for the speaker will be the same, if we imagine that both individuals use the
same word in the future. In this discussion, we will assume that, as with the
Hawks and Doves game, this language game is played more than once.
When the speaker wishes to alert the listener to the presence of the leopard,
there is a certain probability that the speaker will use a given word. Likewise,
there is a certain probability that the listener will associate the speakers word
with the concept leopard. The maximum payoff for these two will increase
as the probability that each player uses the same word for leopard increases.
Payoffs also increase as more players adopt the same vocabulary and
associations. With this kind of payoff structure in place, there is an incentive for
players to understand each other, which can lead, over time, to the development
of a common language.
PASS IT ON
Languages are passed on to younger generations in a variety of ways.
Long-term development of language requires agreed-upon, object-signal
associations to be passed down to new generations of speakers and listeners.
How is this language transmitted to new generations?
Nowak, Plotkin, and Krakauer identified three main methods of language
transmission. The first, and perhaps most intuitive, is parental transmission.
Children tend to acquire the language of their parents and in this mode of
transmission, greater language fitness (average payoff of ones list of
associated signals and objects) would correlate with greater biological fitness.
In other words, the successful use of language can affect ones chances of
passing on genes successfully to the next generation.
The second mode of transmission was identified to be through a role model
outside of the family. In this mode, a high-status member of the group gains
many young imitators. High-ranking role models illustrate the connection
between language and status. So, if a child imitates the language profile of a
high-status individual, that child will, on average, out-compete the children who
do not imitate high-status individuals.

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9.7

The final mode of transmission is simply random learning. In this scenario,

there are no clear incentives for learning language from any particular
individual; instead, children imitate a random mixture of adults without regard
to status or payoff. This tends to maximize confusion and, thus, minimize the
payoffs that can accrue from mutual understanding. Groups who transmit
language via this method tend to take a significantly greater amount of time
to develop a common language, as opposed to groups that use the other two
transmission methods.

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Game Theory
textbook

9.2

origins of game
theory

SECTION

3.2
9.3

simple games

Cake division is a very simple zero-sum game, modeled with a 2 x 2

payoff matrix.
If each player is greedy, we assume that each will choose the strategy with
the best worst-case scenario.
Equilibrium is reached when both players have no incentive to change their
strategies; these can be considered the best strategies.
Matching pennies, in its one-off form, is an example of a game in which

there is no clear best strategy.

Playing multiple rounds of matching pennies does have a clear equilibrium.

SECTION
prisoners dilemma

Mathematicians attempt to analyze types of interactions by treating them as

games in which players use strategies to obtain payoffs.
Games like checkers and chess are games of perfect information; the board
shows both players all the information needed to make the right decision.
Games like poker are games of imperfect information; no player has enough
information (the other players cards are hidden) to make a guaranteed right
decision.
Zero-sum games are games in which a winners payoff is equal to a losers
loss.
Utility is an imprecise concept, but biological payoffs are measurable.
The minimax theorem, attributable to Von Neumann and Morgenstern,
states that players seek the strategy that minimizes their maximum loss.

3.2
9.4

The Prisoners Dilemma is a classic example of a non-zero-sum game.

The equilibrium in Prisoners Dilemma is not the optimum solution.
The Iterated Prisoners Dilemma admits a wide variety of equilibrium
outcomes, depending on the mix of strategies adopted by the players.
In computer tournaments, strategies that are neither always generous nor
always punitive tend to fare the best.
Unit 9 | 32

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SECTION

Game Theory
textbook

9.5

hawks and doves

SECTION

3.2
9.6

fairness in
different cultures

Games can be used as a sociologists measuring stick to quantify notions of

fairness in human cultures.
The Ultimatum Game gives one player a sum of resources to be shared with
another player, who can accept or reject the offer.
The notion of what is fair depends on cultural norms.

Language development can be modeled as a game in which players receive

a payoff when they are in agreement about a particular word referring to a

particular object.
The payoff depends on how many players are in agreement.
Languages are passed on to younger generations in a variety of ways.

SECTION
language

Hawks and Doves is a rudimentary model of game theory in a biological

context in which creatures compete for resources by being either aggressive
or passive.
Aggressive players beat passive players, but they incur costs when they
compete against other aggressive players.
Pure strategies can be a bad idea.
The optimum mix of passive and aggressive behavior depends on the exact
values of the costs and benefits.

3.2
9.7

Unit 9 | 33

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRINT

Axelrod, Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation. USA: Basic Books (Perseus Books
Group), 1984.
Benjamin, Arthur T. and A.J. Goldman. Analysis of N-Card le Her, Journal of
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Barash, David P. The Survival Game: How Game Theory Explains the Biology of
Cooperation and Competition. New York: Times Books: Henry Holt and Co., 2003.
Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. New York:
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Dutta, Prajit K. Strategies and Games: Theory and Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1999.
Eshel, Ilan and L.L. Cavalli-Sforza. Assortment of Encounters and Evolution of
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Fisher, Sir Ronald Aylmer. Randomisation and an Old Enigma of Card Play,
Mathematical Gazette, vol. 18 (1934).
Grassly, N.C., A. von Haeseler, and D. Krakauer. Error, Population Structure,
and the Origin of Diverse Sign Systems, Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol. 206,
no. 3 (2000).
Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr,
Herbert Gintis, and Richard McElreath. In Search of Homo Economicus:
Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies, The American Economic
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American Economic Association (May 2001).

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Henrich, Joseph. Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? Ultimatum Game

Bargaining Among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon, The American
Economic Review, vol. 90, no. 4 (September 2000).
Jager, G. Evolutionary Game Theory and Linguistic Typology: A Case Study,
In P. Dekker, editor, Proceedings of the 14th Amsterdam Colloquium. ILLC,
University of Amsterdam, (2003).
Mero, Laszlo. [Translated by Anna C. Gosi-Greguss. English version edited by
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Nowak M.A. and R.M. May. Evolutionary Games and Spatial Chaos, Nature 359
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Nowak M.A., S. Bonhoeffer, and R.M. May. More Spatial Games, International
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Poundstone, William. Prisoners Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and
the Puzzle of the Bomb. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Siegfried, Tom. A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest
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1 Calvino,

Italo. (translated by William Weaver) If on a winters night a traveler.

San Diego-New York London: Harvest Books/Harcourt Inc., 1981; p 4.
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NOTES
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game theory
TExtbook

9.1

Unit 9 | 36