Well folks, finally a good and clear rendition of the prisoner’s dilemma on television. Last week’s finale of The Bachelor Pad featured the two final contestants choosing between sharing the $250000 prize money or trying to keep it for themselves. If both contestants picked “share” they split the prize money. If one picked “keep” and the other picked “share”, then only the “keeper” got the money and the weeper (so labeled by the Freakonmics blog) got none. If they both picked “keep”, the money would be divided among the other contestants and they would receive none.
Much fun watching and hattip to Jonathan Mas for the Freakonomic link.:
For more on the Prisoner’s Dilemma courtesy of the Freakonomics blog, you can click here.
Professor Schneider,
I was actually tuned in to watch this episode and it was right after we discussed The Prisoner’s Dilemma in class. Needless to say, the people that I was watching it with were a little frightened when I yelled out, “Oh my gosh, this is the Prisoner’s Dilemma..” in which case I then had to explain myself.
But it was really interesting to see this played out on a contemporary reality television show to see how it could be applied in a situation other than the prisoners!
Thanks for sharing this, Andrea! I teach the Negotiator’s Dilemma in my ADR Survey course, so I passed this link along to my students.
It is interesting how they changed the game in that if both parties “kept” or “claimed,” they would receive nothing. That is a significant change that has a big effect on the parties’ choice.