Handout on the Bystander Eect

Ben Polak, Econ 159a

Octob er 2, 2012

Suppose two witnesses observe the same crime taking place on a subway platform. Each must decide whether or not to call the police. Let the payo matrix for this game be as follows: Not call Call Not call 1; 1 0; 1 q Call 1; 0 0; 0 (1 q ) q (1 q)

That is, if person i calls then her payo is the same whether the other person j calls or not. Each person would most like to have the other person call and not call themselves. But, being moral folks, each would prefer to call than to have no-one make the call. Clearly there are two pure-strategy Nash equilibria in this game, [call; not] and [not; call], indicated by the underlined best responses above. These equilibria are e cient: they might arise from communication and coordination. But communication may be unlikely in these circumstances. Moreover, these are equilibria are asymmetric. We might be interested in equilibria that arise from symmetric behavior. To nd the symmetric mixed-strategy equilibrium of this game, let q represent the probability that j does not call and also represent the probability that i does not call. The expected payos to each action are then given by: 1 not call ! q [ 1] + (1 q ) [1] if = then q = . call ! 0 2 Thus, in the symmetric mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium, each player does not call with probability 1=2: The probability that no call is made the worst possible outcome is q q or 1=4. The lesson here is that, without coordination there is a free-rider eect: each person is tempted to let the other call, and hence sometimes a 1=4 of the time in this equilibrium no call at all is made. Notice that, had there been only one witness to the crime, she would have prefered to make the call (for a payo of 0) than not (for a payo of 1). It is the presence of the second bystander that creates the free-rider eect and hence the problem. Now suppose that there are three witnesses to the crime on the subway platform. Each must make a similar decision to call or not, and each has similar preferences: they prefer for someone else to make the call; if they call then they are indierent as to whether anyone else calls; and the worst thing for them is for no-one to call. Intuition suggests that there are two eects of adding a third person. First, it now takes three people not to call for there to be no call. One might think that this makes the possibility of no call occurring less likely. Certainly, if we hold xed the probability that each player calls, then the probability of no-one calling must go down. On the other hand, there is now more of a temptation for each player to free ride and let other players call since there are now two other players who might call. That is, each player is now less likely to call. One might think that this makes the possibility of no call more likely. To see which of these two eects wins, let s re-solve for a symmetric mixed-strategy equilibrium. We can formalize the game by having the rst player choose the rows, the second the columns and the third the

Handout on the Bystander Effect

matrix as follows: Not call Call Not call Call 1; 1; 1 1; 0; 1 0; 1; 1 0; 0; 1 q (1 q ) Not call q (1 q) Not call Call Not call Call 1; 1; 0 1; 0; 0 0; 1; 0 0; 0; 0 q (1 q ) Call q (1 q)

where the rst payo in each box is that of the row player, the second is that of the column player and the third that of the matrix player. Clearly there are now three pure-strategy equilibria, each of which has exactly one caller. To nd the symmetric mixed equilibrium, consider the expected payos (say) to the matrix player if both the row and column player call with probability (1 q ): not call ! call ! q 2 [ 1] + 1 0 q 2 [1] if = then q 2 = 1 1 or q = p . 2 2

p Thus in the symmetric mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, each player does not call with probability 1=2. 3 p 1=2 = Therefore, the probability that no call is made the worst possible outcome is q q q = q p 3 (1=2) = 1= 8. This is more than the probability that no call was made when there were only two players, p which was 1=4 = 1= 16. The lesson here is that adding a third bystander made things worse: the probability of no call went up even though there are now three people who could make that call. We can generalize this result for any n bystanders. Notice that with two players the probability of no 2=1 3=2 call was (1=2) ; and with three players it was (1=2) . In general (see if you can show this at home), the n=(n 1) probability of no call in the symmetric NE with n players is (1=2) which converges to 1=2 as n gets large.