PSYCH 217 Lecture 8: Review - What Economic Games Tell us About the Logic of Human Social Relations
24 Feb 2016
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Review - what economic games tell us about the logic of human social relations. Motivational autonomy: biology determines what can be, not what must be. Our species-typical brain and social structure provide a lot of building blocks. But how those building blocks are put together and applied is often very flexible. We should be skeptical about the inevitability of any kind of outcome or generalization (e. g. , war is inevitable ; people are fundamentally selfish ) Game theory builds off of set situations in which people have to interact with others and make decisions with minimal information. Structure of the game recreates (in a stripped down format) problems that people face in social interactions. Models developed in economics that assume human behavior is rational and self- interested/selfish (maximizing) Key examples of experimental games: prisoners" dilemma game. Two players (strangers to each other), each of whom must make a choice of behavior.
