On April 16, 2007 a shooter killed 33 people on Virginia Tech's campus. One of the stories out of this was that the gunman lined up a group of students and shot them in order. A question asked in the ensuing discussion was why didn't they just attack him? This crowd could have certainly overpowered him, why didn't they?
In the story on this link (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/us/politics/15clinton.html?bl&ex=1203397200&en=0ff8f82bca320f8f&ei=5087%0A), Representative Lewis is changing his support from Clinton to Obama. Lewis had been a strong supporter and long-time friend of Clinton, but is now changing his support.
What do these two stories have in common?
In a game of a crowd against 1 powerful person (powerful politician or a man with a gun), the early movers face a greater risk than the crowd in total. In the case of charging a gunman, the "hero" or first mover, may pay with his/her life, but the crowd will certainly benefit. This may explain why people don't charge the gunman. It may also explain why the crowd charged the cockpit on United flight 93 on September 11. They likely realized that their likelihood of survival was very low, making it "easier" to make the choice to charge the terrorists.
In the case of Rep. Lewis. By making this move, which goes against an endorsement of Clinton just a few months ago, and pits him against a powerful politician, it will cost him dearly if Clinton should rebound and get the nomination.
In a "1 against the crowd" game, the early mover payout is lower than the 2nd mover, 3rd mover, etc. This may explain a hesitance to act.
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2 comments:
Alan -
Great to hear from you! Regarding the VA tech post - it reminds me of a phenomenon known as Diffusion of Responsibility - its a phenomenon where responsibilty for action is not explicitly assigned;when no action is taken its known as the bystander effect where everyone is sort of waiting for the next guy. And in these cases people allow events to occur that they wouldnt normally allow if they were alone. Its kind of like group think. I wonder if the students at VA tech were all assessing the situatiion and deciding what to do but were each waiting for cues for the others and in the end nothing was done. Interesting though on the airplanes over PA during 9/11 - this phenomenon didnt seem to take effect. or maybe it did - maybe one of the passengers rallied the rest of them to take action. Maybe not game theory per se but sort of interesting to think about in this context! Their is definitely a dynamic and game going on during all these interactions but there are many social psychological phenomenon at play. These are interesting things to think about -Good Luck!
Lori,
Good points. I wonder if the "bystander effect" is due to the bystanders not seeing a great enough reward for the risk of being the first mover.
The Diffusion of Responsibility item seems to be game related as well. If you think about the "average payout" per person for the crowd, it is positive, they overcome the gunman. However, the payout for the early mover is potentially negative, so the payout is "diffused" over the crowd, and seems positive, but for any individual to move first, they wouldn't get that benefit.
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