Is game theory a substitute for studying psychology?

Game theorist Eilon Solon apparently thinks so:

As I wrote in a previous post, game theory teaches us insights, like “think strategically”, or “the belief of the other player about the states of nature may differ from your belief”. These insights are the pearls of the theory, and they can help us when facing strategic interactions.

Story 1: I used to give popular talks on game theory. My father, who has 12 years of formal education and runs a printing press, attended one of them. In this talk I told the audience that one should think strategically in a strategic interaction, and put himself in the shoes of the other player. Few days later my father had to print a newspaper for a new client who he did not know. My father, as a careful manager, asked the client to pay for the whole work before the printing machine starts running. The client agreed. Few minutes before the job is scheduled to go into the printing machine my father got a phonecall from the printing press: the client paid only 80% of the amount, he said that he will pay the rest after the job is done. The first reaction of my father was to cancel the job: the cleint did not keep the payment arragement. Then he thought about his game theorist son, and about what his son told him: put yourself in the shoes of the other player. He did. And then he realized that if he were the client, he would be reluctant to pay all the sum up-front: this is the first time he works with this printing press, and he does not know whether they do a good job or a job on time. He decided to give Game Theory a chance, and told his workers to print the job. The end was happy, and the rest of the money was paid after the job was done.

Story 2: In the last several years of her life, my grandmother spent most of her time on the couch, watching TV, reading, solving crosswords. One day she asked me to buy for her few crosswords booklets. I did. Then she asked me how much it cost, because she wanted to pay for these booklets. I told her that it was nothing, a present from me to her. These booklets cost about $20, nothing as compared to the amount you spend on the kids, and anyway my income was higher than her income. She insisted. I thought what she would do if I do not tell her, and I realized that she would never ask again for these booklets or other things she needs, and then she will suffer from it. I told her it was $20 and everyone was happy.

One can dismiss these stories; after all, they involve very simple interactions. One may say that the reasoning is more psychological than game theoretic. Maybe, but I reached these insights knowing game theory and being ignorant of psychology. My conclusion from these and other similar stories is that game theoretic thinking does improve the world.

I hadn't thought about this before, but it is certainly true that game theory at least forces us economists to think/empathize at least a little bit about what might be going on in another person's mind.

Still, I think it's high time that economists look into what psychologists can tell us about what goes on in people's minds.

Linguistics of brain science: sulci and gyri, lobes of all kinds

So many terms to learn--it helps to think of the etymologies to remember the associations, so that I can fit all these terms into a mental map.

Perhaps if I were more of visual-spatial learner, I wouldn't find it so hard to create a mental map of all these anatomical terms to describe parts of the brain, but I do have my limitations in that department. It might be related to the fact that I have left-right agnosia. (Etymology of agnosia: the word means "not knowing" from the Greek prefix a- meaning not and gnosis meaning knowledge.)

Anyway, perhaps thanks to my poet/linguist/lexicographer/librarian dad, I do have a natural inclination towards linguistics, so I think that making notes about some of the etymologies will provide helpful mnemonic devices to keep everything straight in my head.

Sulcus is from the Latin for "furrow" (all those wrinkly depressions in your brain are sulci) Large ones that divide your brain into lobes are called "fissures." Technically the fissure that divides your brain into its left and right half is a sulcus, but people don't usually call it that.

Chris had a neat demonstration in class last week where he took a sheet of paper and talked about how you store in the information in it much more compactly if you crumpled it up. That's why we have such wrinkly brains.

The extensiveness of fissures we have in the brain is called gyrification. Gyri is from a Latin word meaning "ridges," but for some reason we haven't talked a lot about gyri, just sulci in class.

Sulcus and gyrus both have strange associations for me. When I see the word "sulcus," I think sulky! And gyrus makes me think of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky "slithey toves did gyre and gimbal in the wabe."

I have to wonder about the mathematics of all that "gyrification" or, as it's sometimes called all that "foliation." Why is the brain shaped the way it is? I guess the answer is, because it works! As Chris mentioned, the geometry of the human birth canal is a constraint. Bigger brains makes it hard on the mom!

Higher mammals have more gyrification than lower life forms. Dolphins have a lot! Humans have more than macaques, who have more than rodents.

In humans, gyrification starts midway through pregnancy and continues in the postnatal period.

There are disorders: Pachygyria (broad or "thick" gyri), lissencephaly (smooth brain), and polymicrogyria (multiple small gyri) Among other things such disorders can lead to problems with functioning as well as seizures.

Lobe comes from lobus "hull, husk, pod."

There are four lobes of the brain--all their names come from the names of the bones that cover them. Those bones are sort of bony plates (like continental plates!)

frontal makes obvious sense

temporal not so much, but I can remember it by associating with the "temple" area of your head. But why is that area called "temple" to begin with? The Online Etymology dictionary says the following:

temple (2)
"side of the forehead," early 14c., from O.Fr. temple "side of the forehead" (11c.), from V.L. *tempula (feminine singular), from L. tempora, pl. of tempus (gen. temporis) "side of the forehead," probably originally "the thin stretch of skin at the side of the forehead." Possibly associated with tempus span "timely space (for a mortal blow with a sword)," or from the notion of "stretched, thinnest part," which is the sense of cognate O.E. ðunwange, lit. "thin cheek."

parietal lobe hmm, that's a toughie. Parietals are a word that kids don't know any more. But it used to refer to college dorm rules for the hours during which students could have visitors of the opposite sex. And it sort of sits on the "top rear" of your brain, so I kind of envision the parietal lobe as being like the dormitory proctor (that what they call them in Harvard Yard) or warden (that's what they used to call them at Bryn Mawr when I was a student) in charge of enforcing the rules. The word "parietal" comes from a Latin word meaning walls, and presumably their usage in a college rules context comes from the fact that colleges were originally walled off cloisters from the world. I guess your parietal bone is sort of like a big wall too.

Occipital literally means "back of the head." Occidens means "sunset" or "west" just as "orient" comes from roots that mean dawn or east. So if you are facing east, your occipital lobe is facing west.