10/16/23, 2:20 PM The Fathomed Phantom: How a Simple Game Theory Explains The Ghosting Phenomenon | by Andi Tiara

by Andi Tiara | Medium

The Fathomed Phantom: How a

Simple Game Theory Explains The
Ghosting Phenomenon
Andi Tiara · Follow
5 min read · Jun 13, 2021

Picture is taken from here.

Love should be easy, they said. But why Taylor Swift’s said something opposite:
love is a ruthless game, unless you play it good and right? Is love truly a game?

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10/16/23, 2:20 PM The Fathomed Phantom: How a Simple Game Theory Explains The Ghosting Phenomenon | by Andi Tiara | Medium

Many movies, songs, novels, stories had brought up the ghosting issue –
especially when it comes to modern dating – to our everyday life, such as
how the activity could cause damage in human’s psychological side, trust-
issue raises anxiety, and so much more. It is morally wrong for some people
because it’s better to communicate what you’re feeling rather than disappear
without any explanation. This also happens in the professional relationship;
when a company or a candidate decided to leave others hanging for nothing.

I picked up some of the statement from the NY Times article here, that
ghosting, in psychological trait, is the way we concise the authenticity we’ve
searching for in life. If we feel that there’s no connection between us and
(significant) others, then usually we left off the ground. Frankly, that’s just an
example of human behavior, and economics can give you a proof.

In economics, game theory is one of the methods to discover human

behavior. This first initiated by von Neumann, a mathematician (bet you a
little bit surprised) back in 1928. The theory is mainly rooted in mathematics
but mostly used in economics to help decides the best strategy in a rational
decision-making process. Von Neumann’s first implied the game theory with
the idea of mixed-strategy in a two-person zero-sum game. I referred to this
article which discussed about how relevant the game theory deducting the
matters of love. It is simply explained that love is a particular form of social
cooperation, and all that is needed to keep the cooperation in place is
mutual self-interest. This has also been a topic released by BBC to decide
mating strategy.

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10/16/23, 2:20 PM The Fathomed Phantom: How a Simple Game Theory Explains The Ghosting Phenomenon | by Andi Tiara | Medium

Now we’re back to the initial topic. Can we analyze the ghosting
phenomenon? Let’s take a closer look.

Suppose there are two players: you and your crush. Each person’s initial
utility is 1 and you two know that. You don’t have complete information
about your crush’s movement so you analyzed the signals they’ve given to
you for the past few weeks. You realized that it isn’t a good signal — meaning
it’s an imperfect information. You and your crush have two games to play:
either to confess (C) or to ghost (G). The rules are as follows.

If both of you decided to confess, each person would have had 0. That
means you both lose one another.

If one person decided to ghost and the other insisted to confess, then the
person who confess would literally losing 1.

If both of you decided to ghosting each other, each person’s utility would
remain the same as at initial stage.

So, if we translated it into the normal form or bi-matrix, it’d be looked like
this.

Confuse enough? Dude, me too.

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So, in the game theory, we purposefully search for an equilibrium. Nash

Equilibrium (or simply, NE) is the condition where two sides have optimized
their utility. From the table, we know that the pure strategy of Nash
Equilibrium here is 2: (0,0) and (1,1). It means that when you both decide to
confess or the other choose to ghost. There are no dominant strategies here
so both confessing and ghosting considered as NE.

Another case is if the two of you knew what others would choose — then we
called it as perfect information — and you took the first leap. You may choose
to ghost your crush because you got the maximum utility over other choices.
The equilibrium that you would choose is (1,1).

Your decision in picking the (1,1) game is called SPNE. What in the world is
SPNE? It is a shorter name for Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium or let’s just
say an equilibrium where the two players would have had the best result
apart from other choices. Your crush will do the same way as you think
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because the game theory is about how you think the way your rival thinks. In
this case, your rival is your
Searchcrush. Alas, the other person would do the
Writesame

to protect the amount of utility they have…and so are you.

The initial stage of each person would have not the same and can be varied.
There are some factors such as morality, principled values, and other

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unmeasurable indexes that can affect someone’s preferences. But to put it in

a simple and easy-to-understand form, putting 1 as an example to one’s
utility is enough for us to see how the game works.

The famously Prisoner’s Dilemma in game theory had explained how

paradoxical confessing became one of the interesting discussions in the
field. Human behavior tends to decide on something they can get
incentivized from. Similar to Prisoner’s Dilemma, in terms of the phantom
lovers’ game, you’d better confessing what you feel to your crush although
the possibility of you or the other would getting hurt is available.

If both of you knows that you two are not meant for each other, both party
would probably best to take the (G,G) or (1,1) strategy to maximized utility
for each person than insist to confess the feeling you both have.

You don’t know whether your crush has the same initial feeling with you, but
before you lose all the entities to none, you’d better runoff.

P.S. : This is written under the circumstance of studying the game theory due to be
able answering the upcoming finals myself. Wish me luck!

Game Theory Love Writing Economics

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