How Prisoner’s Dilemma Influences Individual’s Actions

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What is it?

Prisoner’s Dilemma is one of the classic games studied in Game Theory.

It tells us how two completely rational individuals might not co-operate even if it is in their best interests to do so.

Here’s the basic outline of the game:

Two criminals, Alice and Bob, are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is under interrogation (with the hope of a confession) in two different rooms. None of them can see or hear the other one.

The police lack enough evidence to convict both on a major charge, but just enough to convict both on a minor offence.

Hence, the police offer Alice and Bob an offer. Each of them is given the opportunity either to betray the other by confessing that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent.

According to this offer,

1. If both of them remain silent, both of them will serve 1 year in prison (for the minor charge).
2. If both of them rat each other out, then both of them will serve 2 years in prison (for the major charge).
3. If Alice betrays Bob, but Bob remains silent, Bob will serve 3 years in prison.
4. If Bob betrays Alice, but Alice remains silent, Alice will serve 3 years in prison.

If you’re wondering why in case 2 why they serve only two years, it’s because that’s the way the game is set up, even though it might not be accurate from a legal perspective.

Now, let’s see things from Alice’s perspective.

Clearly, comparing the left column to the right, betraying Bob offers a greater reward than co-operating with him.

A rational self-interested individual will be tempted to betray their partner in this case. This means that if two rational prisoners are offered this deal, we can always expect them to betray each other, even though co-operating with each other yields the higher reward.

This is because humans often perform actions from individual rationality, rather than collective rationality.

How the Joker shocked everyone

If you’ve seen The Dark Knight, you are already familiar with the prisoner’s dilemma.

As his final act to terrorise the Gotham city, the Joker takes control of two ships containing hundreds of passengers. He places a detonator on each ship, which can blow up the other ship.

The Joker himself has detonators to both ships and announces that if neither of the ships blow up till midnight, he’ll blow up both of them himself.

💡 Fun nugget: one ship contains actual prisoners. Christopher Nolan really embracing the Prisoner’s dilemma!

Clearly, in this case, blowing up the other ship earns greater reward than not doing so.

the scene from Dark Knight

How it affects behaviour on Tinder

Prisoner’s dilemma can be seen clearly in case of Tinder.

Most of your friends belong to one of the following two categories:

1. Swipe right they like and swipe right on the ones they don’t like.
2. Swipe right on everyone. If it is a match, then assess compatibility and likes.

Strategy 2 has an advantage over 1 because there is no time wasted in evaluating people who are not interested in you. A person following strategy 2 only evaluates individuals interested in him/her.

Hence there can be four types of matches on Tinder.

1. Both players play by the rules, both of them like each other, and the match is genuine.
2. Both players swipe right on everyone, and the match is just meaningless.
3. One of the plays straight, and has a bad experience if the other dislikes them after the match.

Due to this, participants who play by the rules are often frustrated by the uninitiated matches and often either churn away from the dating app, or switch to strategy 2 themselves.

Here, switching to strategy 2 yields greater rewards than continuing with strategy 1.

That’s it!

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Originally published at https://notcoding.co.