"Comment - Power and Protocol
By Phedon Nicolaides
IF YOU are a parent, the following will be familiar. You must have often been in situations where, despite all your efforts and admonitions, your child is still misbehaving and your last desperate option is to threaten not to buy ice cream, switch off the television or put away the favourite toy. What is the typical response of any savvy child? “I don’t want ice cream or I don’t like television or I’m tired of that toy anyway.” You then feel outwitted and powerless.
This is precisely what game theory predicts about this kind of bargaining. Power is the ability to withhold what the other side wants. You have more power, the stronger the needs of the other side. Conversely, you are powerless when the other side does not want anything from you."
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