Here is a confession, one that will surely rank for unpopularity with my post about how much I dislike the Kindle. I really dislike Jane Austen’s novels. This is only partly because they were force-fed to me at school, along with Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, other unfavourite authors of mine. It’s also because who cares about who gets married to whom? I could never be bothered, and indeed the novels have all merged into one general pink romantic mush in my memory. Give me Eliot or Gissing or Zola or Hugo.
There, confession made. So it was with some trepidation that I started reading Michael Chwe’s 
, despite the absolutely glowing reviews it’s been receiving (see for example these articles in the
New York Times and
The Washington Monthly). My Austen-antipathy notwithstanding, I thought it very good indeed. The early and later chapters are superb, giving other literary examples such as Shakespeare and African-American folktales, and one can easily extract the argument from the Austen-focused chapters in the middle while skipping details about the various tedious marriage plots.
[amazon_image id=”0691155763″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Jane Austen, Game Theorist[/amazon_image]
The book hits several targets. It demystifies game theory, explaining it as a systematic way of thinking about strategic behaviour; that is, about choosing actions based on thinking through other people’s likely reactions. It defends game theory against the (silly but all-too-common) accusation that people don’t behave rationally and game theory is therefore a tool of neo-liberal economic imperialism. The first part of this assertion is obviously true, but – as the book demonstrates – strategic thinking is a useful tool long pre-dating modern neoclassical economics. Indeed, one of Chwe’s other aims is to support his argument that Jane Austen was explicitly writing about the difference between people who think strategically and those who don’t.
The most interesting part of the book for me was about why, indeed, there are people who do not strategise – about ‘cluelessness’, as he names it, borrowing from the movie. For instance, Chwe points out that in folk tales as in Austen, high-status people are often ‘clueless’ and therefore easily tricked by subordinates whom they cannot imagine think more strategically than they do. He finds five explanations in the Austen novels:
– some people aren’t naturally adept at it, and it’s harder work for the brain than not being strategic
– sometimes the social or cultural distance is too great for people to think through the likely reaction of another (Chwe gives another example of this in the context of US army checkpoints in Iraq)
– some people are too self-focused and assume others are just like themselves
– the fourth reason is status: to admit that a lower status person can strategise, or to strategise about them as an equal, is actually to undermine one’s superior status
– finally, some people assume they don’t need to think about another person’s preferences because they can change them
The book also adds some supplementary explanations for ‘cluelessness’. For example, he argues that the status-related reason is self-reinforcing because naturally clueless people will gravitate towards status-oriented situations, the hierarchy removing the need to be strategic about others. “In other words, stereotypically ‘male’ organizations like the military might be more hierarchical and status-oriented, with each person given an explicit rank, not because men love hierarchy but because their relative cluelessness requires that every social interaction have explicitly defined roles and rules.”
Another reason for adopting overtly ‘clueless behaviour’ is that it can be a good commitment device – for instance, if two cars are approaching head-on, the driver who does worry about the other’s reaction will be the one who gives way, while the one who fails to make eye contact will sail on. Chwe also suggests that thinking strategically involves empathy towards others, which some social superiors will want to avoid (eg. antebellum slaveowners), or involves actually envisioning being in their bodies to understand how they might think or feel. Interestingly, he also points out that a failure to be strategic is often linked with characteristics often found in autistic people, such as literal-mindedness, and a weak ‘theory of mind’.
All of these reasons ring very true – it has often amazed me how unstrategic most people are, especially in business. It is harder, a bit, to think about how other people will react to your actions and choices, but not that hard.
should join the list of strategic classics like
, or the good how-to game theory guides like Dixit and Nalebuff’s
, on the shelf of everybody who wants to be effective in life.
