Games people play - and what to do about them

Ever met someone who stubbornly refuses to admit to whatever he is doing? Annoying, isn't it. Also works magic, most of the time, because as long as you do not understand what it is you are doing wrong, you cannot be expected to change it.

Thomas Schelling, one of the people we can blame for not having a nuclear war just yet, had some pretty good insights into the topic, though. Looked at the proper level of abstraction, of course. I will also be relying on some insights from Eric Berne. Both were geniuses. They clearly had to be.

Essentially, what the person is doing is self-handicapping. Something that can indeed work wonders in a game of war, or business negotiations and of course, in intrapersonal communications. Essentially, it forces the other party to play a restricted game, which is probably not in his favor.

So, of course, the only real solution is to change the game to be more even again. This is fairly easy, if you have something that you can use to credibly punish the person for his transgressions - you just start doing that and pretty soon he will realize that it is not in his best interest to act in that way... and stop.

This, of course, assuming a repeated game. Otherwise, the best you can do is make a threat of punishment and hope he believes it.

However, it is often very hard to make a credible threat. Much of Schelling's "Strategy of conflict" deals with just that fact - and describes how it is often required to severely handicap yourself in order to make the threat credible.

An example due to Schelling himself - if you want to buy a car and are willing to go no higher than 50 000 but the dealer's last bid is 70 000 (but you know 50 000 would still give him profit), you can try signing a legally binding contract with a friend stating that if you buy that car for more than 50 000, you have to also pay your friend the same amount. This, in effect, takes away any possibility of you paying over 50 000 dollars - in a completely demonstrable and provable way that is evident to the car dealer. He will feel cheated, but might still sell you the car.

Not that drastic measures are needed everywhere, though. The point to take home is that credible threats can be notoriously hard to muster and can be very weird and contrived in some cases.

Now, suppose however that the only threat that you can really make is the one you cannot commit to in an at all believable way... or that if carrying out that threat will essentially leave you in so terribly bad state the other party will never believe you are willing to carry it out. Think nuclear war here.. or suicide... or telling a person you love you will never talk with her again. Essentially, something so bad that you just cannot make its consequences any worse for yourself even if you wanted to.

Although Schelling considered cases in which carrying out a threat makes you worse off than you are and showed that there are definitely cases when such threats work, the key point is you have to be able to commit to that. In cases where you can't...

Well, then, you're fucked.

Thankfully, humans are not completely rational beings. This is where Berne and his idea of people constantly playing games with each other comes to play. Namely, most people just play to win and it is often enough to just take away that joy of victory for them to stop. Which sounds a big no for empty threats because you will be called on it and it will amount to one big win to the other party. One that will keep him coming back.

You can of course try to make a threat and stick to it.. but hell, if it literally or figuratively kills you.. face it, you will be called on it and then have to die:P

Now, as stated initially, calling the other person on his game directly will not help - since he is playing that he does not acknowledge it is a game, saying he is playing it (which I believe Berne to advocate) does not take away his victory because he does not have to admit to you being right.

Albert Ellis (the creator of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy) was the person to figure things out, though. And the solution is supposedly surprisingly simple - just replace the verbal acknowledgment with a physical one - as purely behavioral cues often work better than rational ones. Theoretically, the other person is robbed of his victory without having anything to really argue against. Especially if you have set the rules beforehand saying that the "physical acknowledgment" is o.k. in certain well-specified circumstances. And it doesn't even have to be much - a weak slap to the face with a folded paper works miracles on both puppies and humans, at least according to Ellis.

Works especially well in cases where the penultimate threat is "I will never speak to you again" - because then you can just set the terms in a way that "this is how I will act when you do the things I have specified." The person can always choose not to interact with you any more, if he wants to - so this doubles nicely as a commitment to "never talking", as it will now be the other party who would have to worry about carrying it out, taking the burden right off your shoulders :)

It helps to have friends who study psychology. It also helps to study enough yourself to be able to understand that their seemingly ludicrous suggestions actually have a fair chance of working.

And Schelling is just a good general read ;)