The results showed that when people got public credit for their good deeds, enrollments went up. Instead of having a public utility send out direct letters asking people to take part in an energy efficiency/blackout program in their building, he suggested they post a sign-up sheet in the building’s lobby. In one field experiment Yoeli demonstrated that when a selfless act was more public, more people took part. While most believe that they recycle because it helps the environment, on a subconscious, hidden level, they may be doing good for the planet because it’s good for their reputations. Hidden games can also help explain the real motivation behind some altruistic activities, said the authors. “You end up becoming a motivated reasoner … the social thing of trying to persuade gets internalized and ends up affecting your own beliefs in a way that it ends up being hidden,” said Hoffman, who is also a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and a research fellow at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

In the cable news example, the way the game gets hidden, they said, is when one begins to believe the spin.

Hoffman, who also lectures in Harvard’s Department of Economics, said that much of human behavior is “shaped by social pressures, by either the effect you will have on other people by signaling these things, or the effect other people will have on you by positively reinforcing those behaviors.” It’s because those tuning in aren’t interested in the expected aim of uncovering the truth, said Yoeli, a lecturer in Harvard’s Economics Department, but rather in “signaling something about a group membership, or others that their political side is the good side.” Game theory, they suggested, can help explain why highly politically partisan cable news shows that only present one-sided discourse or information maintain steady viewership. In their new book “Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior,” they suggest that that subconscious process can help us understand everything from our aesthetic tastes to our altruism.Ĭo-authors Moshe Hoffman and Erez Yoeli spoke about their latest work last week during a virtual Harvard Science Book Talk. Game theory is the theoretical framework embraced by many mathematicians, psychologists, and economists as a tool for analyzing rational and strategic social interactions and decision-making.īut according to two Harvard scholars, game theory can also help explain ostensibly irrational human behavior, which operates well below the surface of our daily awareness, guiding our actions.

Real life uses for game theory