Some of you might be familiar with the experiment that Chloe participates in at the end of Chapter 6. It has been modified and duplicated and explored in 90 million different ways in many different departments and fields, from psychology to political science to business schools. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a scenario that I first came across in my studies of international affairs. My particular school was really heavy on Game Theory and there are many parties who thoroughly believe that actors (say, countries) act in their own rational strategic self-interest when dealing with other actors. (The problem with this is 1) who is to say what is “rational” and 2) who is to say what is “self-interest”)
The original game was similar to the one Chloe plays with money: two alleged criminals are brought in for questioning and are interrogated separately. The first is told that if he rats on the other, he can be set free. But the second guy is also told this. The twist is that if they BOTH rat, they both go to prison, if neither rats there is some lesser charge (depends on what version you go with— there are many). What’s the most rational thing to do here? In the lab, you’re given the bare bones scenario, but of course in real life it would be different. If you’re with your ride-or-die crime buddy, you both might deeply trust each other and know to not rat. But what if you know the other party and find them to be a little sketchy? What’s the “correct” answer here? (I think rationally and morally are two different questions here.)
There is no finer example of this than.. no, I’m not going to say the Cuban Missile Crisis, or nuclear detente.. but the season finale of Bachelor Pad 3. For those of you who don’t know, when I’m not being very smart (lol), I watch the most mind numbingly stupid television available, and have long been a consumer of terrible Bachelor shows. The premise of Bachelor Pad is that they send various cast members from the Bachelor or Bachelorette into a house where they quickly pair off and there is some weird mixture of romance, competitive games, and about an hour’s worth of the contestants scrambling Survivor style about who should be voted off each week. Previous finales had introduced the prisoner’s dilemma concept, where the final couple—often romantically involved—have “won” by beating out all the other couples, but each member of the couple is separately given a decision to either share the prize money with the other member of the couple, or to keep all of it. If I say “keep” and you say “share,” I get all the money. This was interesting to me, because no one on Bachelor Pad seems like they have studied Game Theory. In previous finales, the couple decided to share, and fucked off into the wilderness, happy as clams, and then probably broke up a few months later and became social media influencers. On season 3, a large ingroup formed with various power couples calling the shots. Nick was just this generic kind of quiet guy that got roped into a nonromantic couple with Rachel, one of the power players—none of whom were particularly nice people. On the finale, Nick shafted her in one of the best moments of reality TV I’ve ever seen. It just goes to show you… that the reason I watch trash TV is actually because it is like one large lab experiment with no ethics where you get to observe various facets of group psychology, manipulation, and how hot people can still be clueless about dating.
When I was in grad school, there were always experiments to participate in advertised all over campus. In psychology, mostly we offered extra credit to students in exchange for their participation, but if you had a little grant money you could offer payment or a raffle ticket to some prize. Over the years I was a research subject in many surveys, a couple fMRI studies, and a few other social psychology experiments. On any given day, there were subjects rating the attractiveness of dating profiles, drinking milkshakes, or interacting with their romantic partner in the lab while being observed. But as someone who had very little money, we all knew where the best experiments were: the business school. The business school was always flush with money and had beautiful, sparkling lab spaces.
One day myself and a very good friend of mine (also a graduate student in psychology) went together for a paid experiment at the Bschool. We sat in a large room on opposite sides with a bunch of other people also in the room. The computer told me that $20 would be involved and that this money would be real. The computer would designate one subject as Player A and one as Player B. Player A would get to decide how to share the money— they could give Player B $1 and keep $19, or split it evenly, or give Player B $19 and only take $1 themselves. I was selected to be a Player A. Because I knew Game Theory and that there would only be one round (this is the critical part), I did the most rational thing and kept $19 for myself, giving $1 to my anonymous partner. (for the record, this was a time in my life where I frequently floated on credit card debt, would sometimes stop buying groceries for a few weeks, and would show up at the medical school for epidemiology talks just because they served free lunch. I would not allocate money this way now.) As we left the experiment, my friend griped, “Man I only got $1 for that.” I silently handed her 9 more dollars.