The Survival Game: How Game Theory Explains the Biology of Cooperation and Competition

"An accessible, intriguing explanation of game theory . . . can help explain much human behavior." —Seattle Post-Intelligencer Humans, like bacteria, woodchucks, chimpanzees, and other animals, compete or cooperate in order to get food, shelter, territory, and other resources to survive. But how do they decide whether to muscle out or team up with the competition? In The Survival Game, psychology professor David P. Barash synthesizes the newest ideas from psychology, economics, and biology to explore and explain the roots of human strategy. Drawing on game theory—the study of how individuals make decisions—he explores the give-and-take of spouses in determining an evening's plans, the behavior of investors in a market bubble, and the maneuvers of generals on a battlefield alongside the mating and fighting strategies of "less rational" animals. Ultimately, Barash's lively and clear examples shed light on what makes our decisions human, and what we can glean from game theory and the natural world as we negotiate and compete every day. "Draws out the implications of game theory for matters great and small, and does so in a thoroughly accessible and inviting way." —New York Times–bestselling author Steven Pinker "Barash combines game theory with evolutionary biology, arguing that the strategic choices people make as they go through life [are] encoded in their brains by millions of years of evolution . . . His examples—including farm economics, jungle mating strategies and World War II battlefields—are convincing." —Washington Post

© 2025 Times Books (Ebook): 9781429932561

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Ebook: 16 April 2025