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What Math Can Teach Us About Standing Up to Bullies
Game theory study shows that being uncooperative gives weaker parties the upper hand [dartmouth.edu]:
In a time of income inequality and ruthless politics, people with outsized power or an unrelenting willingness to browbeat others often seem to come out ahead.
New research from Dartmouth, however, shows that being uncooperative can help people on the weaker side of a power dynamic achieve a more equal outcome—and even inflict some loss on their abusive counterpart.
[...] Published in the latest issue of PNAS Nexus [oup.com], the study takes a fresh look at what are known in game theory as "zero-determinant strategies" developed by renowned scientists William Press, now at the University of Texas at Austin, and the late Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.
Zero-determinant strategies dictate that "extortionists" control situations to their advantage by becoming less and less cooperative—though just cooperative enough to keep the other party engaged—and by never being the first to concede when there's a stalemate. Theoretically, they will always outperform their opponent by demanding and receiving a larger share of what's at stake.
[...] "Unbending players who choose not to be extorted can resist by refusing to fully cooperate. They also give up part of their own payoff, but the extortioner loses even more," says Chen, who is now an assistant professor at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
"Our work shows that when an extortioner is faced with an unbending player, their best response is to offer a fair split, thereby guaranteeing an equal payoff for both parties," she says. "In other words, fairness and cooperation can be cultivated and enforced by unbending players."
[...] "The empirical evidence to date suggests that people do engage in these extortionate behaviors, especially in asymmetric situations, and that the extorted party often tries to resist it, which is then costly to both parties," Hilbe says.
Journal Reference:
Xingru Chen, Feng Fu, Outlearning extortioners: unbending strategies can foster reciprocal fairness and cooperation, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 6, June 2023, pgad176, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad176 [doi.org]
