"Guy posts his sister's hookup list to Facebook... and tags all the guys."
A girl named Katie found a twelve-pack of beer in her teenage brother’s room and ratted him out to their parents. This is not news in any way, but what young Chris, the brother, did in retaliation after being grounded for three months is funny as hell… and so, so wrong…
Not only did he rummage through Katie’s things and find her “hookup list” (aka “blow-jobs-to-hand-out list”), but he published it on his Facebook page…
…and tagged all of the intended recipients.
Since I am a professional economist, it is my job to take all the fun out of things. So here goes.
You can think of a brother-sister game as a prisoner's dilemma game. The brother and the sister each do things that will upset their parents. Both would be better off if their parents didn't find out about the stuff they've done (or plan to do in this case). But the sister (or the brother) can get satisfaction from ratting on her brother and vice versa. Maybe the ratting kid can score brownie points from the parents or maybe the ratting kid just gets a kick out of getting the other kid in trouble.
But if they both rat on each other, then they both get in trouble. Even though the cooperative solution - not ratting - makes both kids better off relative to both ratting, there is an incentive for one of the kids to rat. That's what happened here. Here's a table showing a model of this game:
| Brother | |||
| Rat | Not Rat | ||
| Sister | Rat | -3, -3 | 2, -4 |
| Not Rat | -4, 2 | 1,1 | |
I've just made some numbers up that are consistent this type of game.
A tit-for-tat strategy is one way to solve an enforcement problem in a prisoner's dilemma game. Should the sister have realized that her brother might try to retaliate? Should the brother have realized that the sister would probably retaliate in kind (she threatens retaliation in the comments to the Facebook post)? What strategy will the parents play to restore the peace?
O, the joys of parenting (and growing up).
HT Chris Steinbach