Sociological Theory II Week 2: (Strategic) Interaction Hilary 2019 Dr Anna Krausova http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sant3223/
Last week: ‘rational action’? ▪ ‘Society is not something external to the individual; it is internalized through emotions such as shame and anger.’ ▪ Recall the example of protest from Bolivia? ▪ Aymara and Quechua indigenous communities protest attendance ▪ normal for nearly all to join or support protests ▪ talk of solidarity, feelings of outrage ▪ but also fines for not attendance ➔ What if the outcome is the most ‘rational’ (the greatest pay -off), but the motivation is ‘emotional’?
Game theory’s rational action (RA) ▪ Theory of interdependent decisions’ ▪ Players; Payoffs; Preference Order ▪ Strategies; Best Response ➔ ▪ Equilibrium ▪ Nash equilibrium ▪ Strategic interaction ▪ (Rational) belief formation ▪ Optimal collection of information ▪ Rational preferences ▪ Essence of RA: 1) conditional (if you want X, do Y) 2) outcome-oriented (Elster, 2016)
Assurance games Prisoner’s Dilemma Assurance Game: (one last time!) e.g. Stag Hunt B B Cooperate Defect Cooperate Defect A A Cooperate 6, 6 0, 10 Cooperate 4, 4 0, 1 Defect 10, 0 2, 2 Defect 1, 0 1, 1 4
Coordination Games Chicken Game Bach or Stravinsky B B Cooperate Defect Cooperate Defect A A Cooperate Cooperate 2, 2 1, 3 1, 2 0,0 Defect Defect 3, 1 0, 0 0,0 2, 1 Focal Point Game B Cooperate Defect A Cooperate 1, 1 0, 0 Defect 0,0 1, 1
Focal points ▪ Shelling’s Strategy of Social Conflict (1960) ▪ Lack of information & inability to communicate ▪ How do we decide when the choice appears to be arbitrary, but we need to coordinate? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0MY923XLtY
Focal points https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0MY923XLtY
Focal points https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0MY923XLtY
Focal points https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0MY923XLtY
Focal points ▪ Most common answers: ▪ Problem 1: A6 ▪ Problem 2: $1,000,000 / $20 ▪ Problem 3: January 1 st ▪ Problem 4: Heads ▪ Most people pick A6 ▪ 8 of 34 people picked exactly as above ($1,000,000, not $20) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0MY923XLtY
Culture and norms ▪ Focal points – influenced by (cultural) expectations ▪ Can we integrate culture / social norms into game theory? ▪ Gintis The Bounds of Reason (2014) ▪ “social norms as choreographer of a correlated equilibrium” ▪ Players will follow the choreographers’ direction to cooperate as long as the cost of violating the social norm is higher than the individual benefit of defecting ▪ The folk theorem: “Indeed, when a game G is repeated an indefinite number of times by the same players, many of the anomalies associated with finitely repeated games disappear... The exact nature of these equilibria is the subject of the folk theorem, which shows that when self-regarding individuals are Bayesian rational, have sufficiently long time horizons, and there is adequate public information concerning who obeyed the rules and who did not, efficient social cooperation can be achieved in a wide variety of cases. The folk theorem requires that each action taken by each player carry a signal that is conveyed to the other players.” (Gintis, 2014: 175)
Sequential Games: e.g. Assurance Game Player A D C Player B D C C D 2, 2 3,1 1,3 4,4 D=Defect; C=Cooperate 12
Trust ▪ Do individual ‘intentions’ matter, or are external incentives more important? ▪ “The addition of sanctions may change the utilities for a basically egotistic agent, or they may provide assurance for an agent who is basically cooperative” ( Williams in Gambetta, 1988: 4) Motivations for cooperation Motivation Egoistic Non-egoistic Micro Individual benefit in this Personal liking; friendly relations; situation (e.g. family; etc. * Macro Individual benefit in general Moral/ethical disposition; Level (e.g. fear of sanctions by state) religious belief; etc.
Trust ▪ Psychologically rewarding (Good in Gambetta, 1988) ▪ But, harder to earn than to lose (recent evidence: Bozoyan & Vogt, 2016) ▪ Mechanisms of trust? ▪ e.g. s haring compromising secrets (Flashman & Gambetta, 2014) ▪ or previous displays of (non-instrumental) generosity (Gambetta & Przepiorka, 2014) ➔ Reputation (Dasgupta in Gambetta, 1988) ➔ Signalling Theory (Hamill, 2010; Gambetta, 2009)
Mechanisms of sequential games ▪ E.g. Gambetta & Przepiorka, 2014: ▪ generosity and trustworthiness highly correlated - former can be a sign of latter “A generous choice made naturally by uninformed trustees and reliably revealed is more effective in persuading trusters to trust than a generous choice that could be strategic or a lie.” ▪ Importance of signal interpretation
Signalling ▪ How to communicate trustworthiness? ▪ Hamill’s The Hoods: Crime and Punishment in Belfast (2010) ▪ ‘Unorganised’ crime ▪ Trust low - information scarce ➔ engaging in violent , risky behaviour (high cost) ➔ Seemingly ‘irrational’ behaviour – BUT ‘rational’ if a signal ▪ Cf. violence as a result of interaction dynamics (Collins, 2008)
How ‘strategic’ is interaction? ▪ Are interactions occasions for us to pursue our goals (or adjust our beliefs/expectations), or does social reality develop in them? ▪ Example: a parcel delivery ▪ A delivery driver asks you to keep a parcel for your neighbour. ▪ Do you? Why/why not?
How ‘strategic’ is interaction? ▪ Are interactions simply occasions for us to pursue our goals (or adjust our beliefs/expectations)? ▪ Example: a parcel delivery ▪ A delivery driver asks you to keep a parcel for your neighbour. Do you? Why/why not? ▪ Think about what goes through your mind in that instance. If you keep it, were you calculating in that very moment that we would all be better off if neighbours helped each other this way? Or did you simply not want to be rude/it would have been uncomfortable to say no? Then, does the latter depend on how friendly the delivery driver was? ▪ Or: ▪ Producers of both structures and the individual (interactionism(s) of Mead; Goffman; Collins) ▪ Occasions for structures to determine our behaviour / outcomes (e.g. Stanford Prison Experiment)? ➔
BBC Prison Study (2002) ▪ Reaction to Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) ▪ Not a direct replication ➔ Very different findings! (Reicher & Haslam, 2006) ▪ Leadership matters ▪ In the SPE, guards being directed by warden to be ‘tough’ ▪ Here, without such input, guards ‘leaderless’ ▪ Prisoners more organised; union leader able to instigate riot ▪ However, ultimately fails – even more authoritarian outcome ➔
BBC Prison Study ➔ • Beliefs changes based on interactions • Goals changes based on external incentives (initially, prisoners could ‘move up’) • External validity? “There is always a balance between existing constraints and future possibilities” (Haslam & Reicher, 2007: 128).
How ‘strategic’ is interaction? ▪ How important are the intentions of the ‘intentional’ actor? ▪ E.g. persistence of racial inequality ▪ To what extent does it matter if ▪ a person is intentionally discriminating, ▪ or maximising self- interest (e.g. avoiding minority status: Schelling’s segregation models), ▪ or exhibiting internalised cognitive patterns / learnt behaviours ➔ discriminatory in everyday interactions? (e.g. microaggressions (e.g. Shoshana, 2016)) ▪ If the outcome is persistence of racial inequality? ➔ Gender next week
Essay questions: ▪ What factors lead to the depletion of trust in a community? ▪ Can economic exchange take place without trust? Further revision questions: ▪ Why do people trust each other? ▪ Are social norms always functional for solving problems of collective action? ▪ Can sociologists explain ‘irrational’ beliefs?
Any questions? anna.krausova@sociology.ox.ac.uk
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