Game+Theory+12


 * To Eat or Not to Eat?

Y ou and your sister are on a diet together. However, your mom made a cake over the weekend and it is sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting to be devoured. Will either of you eat it? ** Materials Required -One cake
 * - **One sister

Rules/Payoffs -Since you both are supporting each other in this diet, if you both don't eat it, you'll get happiness out of it- 20 units of it. -If one of you eats the cake and the other doesn't, you'll get the pleasure of eating the cake without the other one knowing you ruined your diet. In this scenario you get 30 units of happiness, and the other one will actually lose happiness since they'll find out and their trust will be broken, let's say that one earns -5 units of happiness. -If both eat it, you will get the satisfaction of eating the cake. However, you won't have very much self-esteem eating the cake, plus it's not nearly as satisfying that you have to share it. If both of you eat it, you get 10 units of happiness.

Predicted Outcome You'll both end up eating the cake. A Nash Equilibrium does develop once a matrix is created for this scenario, and both players' dominant strategies are to eat the cake. To explain, if one sister were to choose to not eat the cake, the other could choose 20 happiness points of helping the other on her own diet, or 30 points by eating the cake alone- so she would choose to eat the cake. If the original sister were to choose to eat the cake, however, the results would be the same- the girl could either get -5 units by not eating the cake, or 20 by eating it. Thus, both dominant strategies are to eat the cake.