Game theory is the study of how people behave in strategic situations.

Strategic decisions are those in which each person, in deciding what actions to take, must consider how others might respond
to that action.
The prisoners dilemma is a particular game between two captured prisoners that illustrates why cooperation is difficult to
maintain even when it is mutually beneficial.
The Prisoners Dilemma
The police have caught two people whom they know have committed an armed robbery together. Unfortunately, they lack
admissible evidence to get a judge to convict both of them. What they have is enough evidence only to send them to jail for 2
years for theft of the getaway vehicle. Placed in different cells with no way to communicate with each other, each of the
prisoners are offered by the police a deal:
If you will confess to the armed robbery, implicating your partner, and he refuses to confess, then youll go free and he
receives 10 years. If you both confess then each of you will get 5 years. If both of you refuse to confess then each of you will get
2 years for the car theft only.
If you were one of the prisoners what will be your choice?
The dominant strategy is the best strategy for a player to follow regardless of the strategies chosen by the other players
The prisoners dilemma provides insight into the difficulty in maintaining cooperation.
Cooperation is difficult to maintain, because cooperation is not in the best interest of the individual player.
The game of stag hunt has been known by many names in the literature of game theory, among them "trust
dilemma," "assurance game," and "coordination game." These colorless terms have been firmly superseded by the
more poetic "stag hunt," which derives from a metaphor in Swiss-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's A
Discourse on Inequality (1755).
The writings of Rousseau idealized primitive man and held that most social ills were the product of civilization
itself. He based his philosophy on a speculative and inaccurate conception of prehistory. In A Discourse on
Inequality Rousseau attempted to offer "scientific" support for his arguments with traveler's tales that have an
almost magic-realist quality today. He tells of the orangutan presented to the Prince of Orange, Frederick Henry. It
slept in a bed with its head on the pillow and could drink from a cup. From reports of orangutans forcing unwanted
sexual attention on women, Rousseau speculates that they were the satyrs of Greek mythology.
Part Two of the Discourse theorizes that the first human societies began when people forged temporary alliances
for hunting. The "stag" is a deer in Maurice Cranston's translation:
If it was a matter of hunting a deer, everyone well realized that he must remain faithfully at his post; but if a hare
happened to pass within the reach of one of them, we cannot doubt that he would have gone off in pursuit of it
without scruple and, having caught his own prey, he would have cared very little about having caused his
companions to lose theirs.
The point is that no individual is strong enough to subdue a stag by himself. It takes only one hunter to catch a
hare. Everyone prefers stag to hare, and hare to nothing at all (which is what the stag party will end up with if too
many members run off chasing hares).
The payoffs, in arbitrary points, look like this:


Hunt stag Chase hare
Hunt stag 3,3 0,2
Chase hare 2,0 1,1


Obviously, mutual cooperation is a Nash equilibrium. The players can't do any better no matter what. Temptation
to defect arises only when you believe that others will defect. For this reason the dilemma is most acute when one
has reason to doubt the rationality of the other player, or in groups large enough that, given the vagaries of human
nature, some defections are likely.

Description
There are two pure strategy equilibria. Both players prefer one equilibrium to the other- it is both Pareto optimal and Hicks
optimal. However, the inefficient equilibrium is less risky as the payoff variance over the other players strategies is lower.
Specifically, one equilibrium is pay-off dominant while the other is risk-dominant.
It is therein that Rousseau contrasts the pay-off of hunting hare (where the risk of non-cooperation is small and the reward
equally small) against the pay-off of hunting the stag (where maximum cooperation is required but the reward is much greater.)
Thus, rational agents are pulled in one direction by considerations of risk and in another by considerations of mutual benefit.
A concept of game theory where the optimal outcome of a game is one where no player has an incentive to deviate from his or
her chosen strategy after considering an opponent's choice. Overall, an individual can receive no incremental benefit from
changing actions, assuming other players remain constant in their strategies. A game may have multiple Nash equilibria or none
at all.
The ability of a nation to apply all or some of its elements of national power - political, economic,
informational, or military - to rapidly and effectively deploy and sustain forces in and from multiple
dispersed locations to respond to crises, to contribute to deterrence, and to enhance regional stability.
See also elements of national power.
Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. US Department of Defense 2005