Game Theory for Social Science

Here's the strategic form: 1 guy can choose to party or not party. 1 girl can choose to party or not party. Guy gets a higher payoff if girl goes to a party. Girl gets the same payoff if she parties or stays home.

1. I'll generalize that guys want to find a "nice" girl. Maybe even more general that someone that is seemingly "compatible". People have their preferences may it be physical, emotional, personality, etc.

2. In order to find these "nice" girls, guys go to social settings, introduce ourselves, try to stand out or make ourselves seem unique in our own way, without pushing ourselves over to be someone we're not...

3. These social settings, perhaps, are IRONICALLY, not the places that are populated at maximum probability of the nice girls or type of girls we actually want to meet.

4. This perhaps limits guys to maybe an academic setting or random encounter (e.g. introduced through a friend), in which case, we are subject to a "weirder" crowd of the Berkeley public, or if I was less blunt, greater variety of personalities.

5. The game compatibility is this: for guys is that we go to these social settings, in which case, the nice girls we are looking for may not be at these social settings. They are, rather, either at home being a good person doing homework, or watching a movie - resulting in the chance of meeting each other at a very low percent.

Solving this game would involve not going to these social settings, but that is counter-intuitive to meeting people at all, and in layman's terms is associated as "nerd", "loner", or any other words you fancy.

So with backwards induction, the guy chooses to stay home because he might not find "that" type of girl, and the girl will stay home because she doesn't like "that" type of guy. Their payoffs are [0, 1] for guy and girl respectively, as the guy stays home and does not meet the girl, while the girl studies and/or has a good time with her girlfriends.

Note: serious, but also not serious.

2nd note: Problem Set 0% Complete