Chicken: Definition and Much More from Answers.com

来源:百度文库 编辑:神马文学网 时间:2024/04/26 17:18:35
Game which takes its name from ‘dare’ games said to be played byCalifornian teenagers: two people are driving head-on at one another ona narrow road; the first to swerve is chicken. When two people areplaying, Chicken is best represented by the following diagram:

where a>b>c>dand in each box the letter before the comma is what I get and theletter after the comma is what you get. The paradoxical feature ofChicken is that each player has an incentive to try to lock the otherinto cooperating (here, swerving) by announcing in advance that he orshe will defect (here, keep going). If this works, the defector willget a (the best result) and the cooperator c (the third-best). But if both players do it and neither swerves, both get d, their worst outcome: something which was widely feared in theCuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Furthermore, thesupergamefaced by each Chicken player in deciding whether to precommit him- orherself to defection is itself a Chicken game. Chicken is thus verydifferent fromPrisoners‘ Dilemmadespite a close superficial resemblance. Real-life contributors‘dilemmas usually resemble one or the other. Everybody is tempted tofree ride,that is let others contribute and benefit from their contributionswithout paying oneself. If universal free-riding leads to the worstoutcome for everybody, the game is a form of Chicken. If it leads to asuboptimal, but not the worst, outcome for everybody, it is probably aform of Prisoners‘ Dilemma.