MODELLING ALTRUISTIC BEHAVIOUR: A CASE OF FAILURE IN COORDINATION

This paper seeks first to build up a game‐theoretic model of the interactions of two agents ‐ a husband and a wife ‐ in a short story about sincere selection of a strategy of self‐sacrifice, and then to find out a solution of the model. This formal model as well as informal analysis is employed to argue that the conventional virtue of everybody's choice of a strategy of sacrifice for others in a group, especially when these strategies are uncoordinated, may ultimately lead to social vice, i.e. irrational behaviour and attempts at rationalization of it by all.