Survival of the astute?: horrendous games and incautious players

Abstract EN

Within literature, the process of decision-making has long occupied the minds and the works of authors and novelists.

Recently, human choices have been influenced by abhorrent challenges – outside the accustomed social and literary interpretations.

In this regard, the study suggests a comprehensive understanding of choices by borrowing the ideas of game theory and behavioural economics.

In the paper at hand, selected notions of game theory such as cooperative games, non-cooperative games, stag-hunt, prisoner's dilemma, incomplete information, and Nash equilibrium – are applied on David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004) and Ben Elton's Blind Faith (2007).

To achieve this, the study interprets each novel as a game and its characters as the players who control the game.

Along with game theory, it highlights the factors that affect rational choices in the two novels, represented in Richard Thaler's contributions about the constraints of decision-making such as self-control, bounded rationality, and social preferences.

In large, by merging the firm rationality of game theory and the bounded rationality of Thaler's theory, the study questions the resilience of human choices under credible threats and social variables in the two novels.