Game Theory In A Game

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Many social interactions we encounter on a daily basis that involve personal decisions simultaneously involve decisions made by others that affect the overall outcome. Any situation in which the outcome is dependent on the choices of two or more people is what defines an interactive decision. Game theory studies the human behavior involved in these strategic settings, which surround the interactive decisions. In order to label a social interaction a game there needs to be two or more decision making agents, called players, each with two or more options to act upon, called strategies, and a clear understanding of what each player’s preferential outcome is that are associated with numerical payoffs (Colman, 2016). For example, when two people …show more content…

According to Aumann (2000), “The nash equilibrium and most of its variants express the idea that each player individually maximizes his utility…” (p. 23). While making a decision, players are thought to consider what other player(s) will most likely do, each one if multiple, in order to predict how to get the best outcome. Players attempting to attain the best payoff have been explained in game theory by common knowledge and rationality assumptions in order to understand the other players. Common knowledge is the general information about the specifications of the game and knowing that each player knows it, that each player knows each other knows it and so on (Colman, 2016). Rationality means players are always making decisions to obtain the highest payoff based on their knowledge, which is also considered common knowledge (Colman, 2016). Together, these are fundamental components to game theory and help us understand the underlying structure to decision-making in …show more content…

Breaking down the different behavior that is involved in interactive decisions can help predict likely outcomes and in turn benefit society. Games have three main forms, which are pure coordination, strictly competitive and mixed motive, that provoke players to either fully cooperate, move forward with only individual needs in mind or a compromise between the two. Payoffs are a part of every game and the utility for each player is determined by completeness, transitivity and lottery in order to ensure they are a rational decision maker. Some of the key approaches used to obtain these utilities are dominant strategy, best reply and nash equilibrium. Nash equilibrium has become a focus of game theory because it sheds light on the motivation involved in maximizing utilities as well as how players use common knowledge and rationality to achieve this goal. These fundamental ideas and key concepts of game theory should be studied and analyzed carefully in order to benefit from the

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