Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Mini: Rock, Paper, Scissors
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome
- 0:16Speaker 1: to Why we Do what we Do Mini. I'm your
- 0:18Speaker 1: host Abraham and I'm your host Shane. We are a
- 0:21Speaker 1: psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans and
- 0:25Speaker 1: non human animals do. And this is a short episode
- 0:29Speaker 1: called the mini because it's short and so we only
- 0:32Speaker 1: record for like a good fifteen minutes or less, or
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- 0:55Speaker 1: a friend. I'll talk more about that at the end
- 0:57Speaker 1: of this discussion, but we need to get into it
- 0:59Speaker 1: because it's a mini. Shane.
- 1:02Speaker 2: Yes, you're ready, Rock Paper Scissors?
- 1:06Speaker 1: Oh oh, we both did scissors?
- 1:10Speaker 3: Tie?
- 1:10Speaker 1: All right? There is way more to talk about with
- 1:13Speaker 1: this game than I would have originally thought. When I
- 1:16Speaker 1: started this notes. But we are doing these notes. We
- 1:19Speaker 1: were talking about rock paper scissors.
- 1:21Speaker 2: Oh, what a fun game. It's the game to settle
- 1:23Speaker 2: all scores.
- 1:24Speaker 1: Right yeah yeah between two people, between two people. Yes,
- 1:27Speaker 1: we are going to talk about what rock paper scissors is,
- 1:31Speaker 1: where it comes from, and what it can tell us
- 1:34Speaker 1: about human behavior.
- 1:35Speaker 2: Yes, so let's get into it. Rock paper scissors or
- 1:39Speaker 2: rochambeau is an ancient competitive game. So it is gone
- 1:42Speaker 2: by many many many names, some sources of degree. It
- 1:46Speaker 2: most likely originated in ancient China, with the earliest mentioned
- 1:48Speaker 2: in a book called Wuzuzu by Ming dynasty writer Shi
- 1:53Speaker 2: Xiao Jun or Jou Jun, who describes the first iteration
- 1:57Speaker 2: of the game similar to rock paper scissors, to be
- 1:59Speaker 2: considered its progenitor.
- 2:01Speaker 1: Yes, so, she Jaozhou, I believe is how we say it.
- 2:06Speaker 1: I'm sorry if we're butchering that. They write that this
- 2:09Speaker 1: game called Shaushiling originated sometime during the Han dynasty in China,
- 2:14Speaker 1: which was two h six BCE to two twenty CE,
- 2:19Speaker 1: so just a cool four hundred year period, no big deal,
- 2:22Speaker 1: no big deal, in which it quickly spread to Japan,
- 2:25Speaker 1: where a version of a cyclical competitive game. There was
- 2:29Speaker 1: a whole genre of these sort of cyclical competitive games
- 2:33Speaker 1: called sansukumi ken, which roughly translates into three are afraid
- 2:38Speaker 1: of one another and then ken is.
- 2:41Speaker 2: Fist that's fantastic, yeah yeah, and the the Rock paper
- 2:46Speaker 2: Scissors version of this was called mushi ken. Okay, So
- 2:50Speaker 2: in the Japanese version, hand gestures representing a frog, which
- 2:53Speaker 2: is a fist with the thumb extended out, a slug,
- 2:56Speaker 2: a fist with the little finger extended out, and a
- 2:58Speaker 2: snake a fist with the index finger I exended out.
- 3:02Speaker 2: That's the three. So it's a thumb, peaky finger or
- 3:04Speaker 2: pointer finger when you throw your fist.
- 3:07Speaker 1: Yes, and that's the order in which they beat it,
- 3:09Speaker 1: so it's it's supposed to be that frog beats slug,
- 3:14Speaker 1: slug beats snake, snake beats frog. And so like Rock
- 3:18Speaker 1: paper scissors, they would throw one of those hand symbols,
- 3:22Speaker 1: and you know, whoever threw the symbol that won obviously won. Sure,
- 3:26Speaker 1: And that's that's how they'd play.
- 3:28Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it.
- 3:29Speaker 1: Yeah, so, which I actually kind of want to try
- 3:32Speaker 1: that version now because it just sounds like fun. But okay,
- 3:36Speaker 1: so this this cyclical three tiered game. It first made
- 3:40Speaker 1: its way to America in the early nineteen hundreds, with
- 3:43Speaker 1: they mentioned in a nineteen twenty one edition of The
- 3:46Speaker 1: Washington Herald calling it Chinese gambling, which feels very on
- 3:51Speaker 1: brand for the nineteen twenties in America. Yeah, it was
- 3:53Speaker 1: mentioned in eighteen twenty four in England where they called
- 3:56Speaker 1: it zot and it was mentioned apparently for the first
- 4:00Speaker 1: time in nineteen twenty seven in France in an article
- 4:04Speaker 1: in which it was called jo jappone, which translates simply
- 4:07Speaker 1: to Japanese game. And there are actually some sources who
- 4:10Speaker 1: credited this to Japan, but most scholars are very certain
- 4:15Speaker 1: that thus originated in China and not Japan, although it
- 4:18Speaker 1: obviously made its way to Japan from China very quickly
- 4:22Speaker 1: early on.
- 4:23Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, in case you've never seen or heard of
- 4:25Speaker 2: this somehow in some way, it's a two player game
- 4:27Speaker 2: in which both players face one another and form their
- 4:29Speaker 2: dominant hand into a fist, which they hold out in
- 4:32Speaker 2: front of themselves. They both raise and lower their fists rapidly,
- 4:35Speaker 2: like we just did at the beginning of the show.
- 4:36Speaker 2: We go rock paper sis or shoot, you know, something
- 4:38Speaker 2: like that. Sometimes landing their fist at an open palm
- 4:41Speaker 2: of their other hand, which is what we did. You
- 4:43Speaker 2: couldn't see it, but that's what we did. You might
- 4:44Speaker 2: have heard it in the background if you heard slapping.
- 4:46Speaker 2: That's what that was.
- 4:48Speaker 1: Just to be clear, slapping sounds of the background. We're
- 4:51Speaker 1: just our our fist punching our palm.
- 4:53Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just so everybody is on the same pager
- 4:56Speaker 2: and sometimes you just do it in the air. They
- 4:57Speaker 2: make three pounding motions, usually in sync with one another,
- 5:00Speaker 2: which is what we did while saying the name of
- 5:02Speaker 2: the game, one word at a time along with each
- 5:04Speaker 2: downward motion. Rock paper scissors. So that's what we did,
- 5:07Speaker 2: where we held our fist out and we said rock
- 5:08Speaker 2: paper scissors. Shoot, And that's kind of what it looks.
- 5:11Speaker 1: Like or rock paper scissors ads. All right, we're back.
- 5:21Speaker 1: We've been describing how rock paper Scissors works if you
- 5:24Speaker 1: are not familiar with it, despite its ubiquitousness. As you said,
- 5:28Speaker 1: both people essentially make you know three sort of like
- 5:31Speaker 1: if you're banging your fist on a table, but it's
- 5:33Speaker 1: just an open air or on your open palm of
- 5:34Speaker 1: your other hand, and you do that three times and
- 5:38Speaker 1: at the same time at the end of those three times,
- 5:41Speaker 1: both players form their hand into some sort of gesture.
- 5:44Speaker 1: In that first Japanese game, it was the thumb, the
- 5:47Speaker 1: index finger of the pinky finger. In Rock paper Scissors,
- 5:51Speaker 1: you might form a fist which represents the rock, a
- 5:54Speaker 1: V shape between your index and middle fingers, like the
- 5:56Speaker 1: peace sign. All they're holding it vertically, and that represents
- 5:59Speaker 1: the scissors. And then there's the open, flat hands down
- 6:04Speaker 1: palm representing paper. And so the cyclical nature of this
- 6:09Speaker 1: is that rock beats scissors. So if someone throws rock
- 6:12Speaker 1: and the person's beat scissors, the person who throws rock wins.
- 6:15Speaker 1: Scissor beats paper. I mean you, if someone throws scissors
- 6:18Speaker 1: and someone beats paper, then scissors wins, and paper beats rock.
- 6:22Speaker 1: So if someone throws rock and someone throws paper, then
- 6:24Speaker 1: paper wins. And that makes it a cyclical competition with
- 6:28Speaker 1: no clear advantage, advantageous symbol to throw, no gesture that
- 6:32Speaker 1: you would throw that's gonna guarantee you the win, because
- 6:35Speaker 1: you might hear rock beats paper, paper beat scissors and think, well,
- 6:37Speaker 1: I'm always gonna throw rock, but paper beats rock, right,
- 6:41Speaker 1: So if someone if you start with rock, thinking that
- 6:43Speaker 1: someone might throw scissors. Then if they throw paper then
- 6:46Speaker 1: they win. So that's kind of the nature of the
- 6:48Speaker 1: game there.
- 6:48Speaker 2: Yeah, Now some people throw hand gestures when they finish
- 6:51Speaker 2: saying scissors, so they go rock paper scissors and throw
- 6:54Speaker 2: some throw them on the fourth downward gesture after scissors,
- 6:57Speaker 2: and so we go rock paper scissors, then go or
- 7:00Speaker 2: some ad shoot like we did earlier, which I'm pretty
- 7:03Speaker 2: sure is morphed into shoe for some people, which indicates
- 7:06Speaker 2: throwing the symbol on the fourth gesture or the fourth
- 7:09Speaker 2: downward movement. The rules should be agreed ahead of time,
- 7:13Speaker 2: so that's something you're always going to want to make
- 7:14Speaker 2: sure you do. Yeah, as like say, are we throwing
- 7:16Speaker 2: on shoot? Are we throwing on you know, and you
- 7:17Speaker 2: want to make sure that that's really clear for everybody
- 7:19Speaker 2: that's playing.
- 7:20Speaker 1: Now, the two people who are playing, they do this
- 7:23Speaker 1: downward gestures with their closed fist, then they form their
- 7:25Speaker 1: fist into some gesture. If one person clearly beats the other,
- 7:29Speaker 1: that is like for example, someone throws scissors, the other
- 7:32Speaker 1: throws paper, then the scissors wins, then the competition is over.
- 7:35Speaker 1: One person wins. Sometimes they will do an accompanying gesture
- 7:39Speaker 1: to show their victory. So rock might close on the scissors,
- 7:43Speaker 1: like they will sort of gently press on the top
- 7:45Speaker 1: of the scissors to close them. Scissors might cut the paper,
- 7:48Speaker 1: the paper might cover the rock. Have you played that
- 7:50Speaker 1: way where you sort of like fall up.
- 7:52Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, no, see, I want to make sure
- 7:53Speaker 2: you know I one that's right.
- 7:55Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a confirmation that victory has been had. Sometimes
- 8:00Speaker 1: times people will play two to three games in a
- 8:02Speaker 1: row and get sort of a majority. So best two
- 8:04Speaker 1: out of three is how they play it. And if
- 8:07Speaker 1: both people throw, if it's the case that there is
- 8:09Speaker 1: not a clear winner because both people throw the same symbol,
- 8:12Speaker 1: just rematch and go again. It takes only about five
- 8:15Speaker 1: seconds to play, so you can play through dozens of
- 8:18Speaker 1: these games in a short period of time if compelled
- 8:20Speaker 1: to do so.
- 8:21Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty wonderful. Some people also play with their feet.
- 8:24Speaker 2: Rock is feet together, paper is feet spread out to
- 8:28Speaker 2: the sides, and scissors is feet spread out one in
- 8:30Speaker 2: front of the other.
- 8:31Speaker 1: So they'll kind of do you know, rock, paper scissors
- 8:33Speaker 1: shoot and then they'll they'll jump their legs into some position.
- 8:36Speaker 1: I could see this being relevant for people who have
- 8:38Speaker 1: limb differences or for people who just prefer to do
- 8:43Speaker 1: larger motions. Maybe kids would enjoy this version. There's also
- 8:46Speaker 1: like a whole body version where you can form your
- 8:47Speaker 1: body into something. But it does seem like it'd be
- 8:49Speaker 1: pretty easy to guess what someone's going to do and
- 8:51Speaker 1: try and beat them if you you could take that
- 8:55Speaker 1: long to form your body into some shape. But that's
- 8:58Speaker 1: that's how the game is played at least. But why
- 9:01Speaker 1: talk about this thing?
- 9:02Speaker 2: Yeah, so we want to talk about this because it's
- 9:05Speaker 2: an interesting game that has been based in game theory
- 9:08Speaker 2: because there is there's no clear winning strategy. As one
- 9:11Speaker 2: paper described it, it is quote a basic model system
- 9:14Speaker 2: for studying decision making in non cooperative strategic interactions.
- 9:18Speaker 1: Yeah, and people have researched this game. So in twenty fourteen,
- 9:22Speaker 1: there was a paper in Scientific Reports where they asked
- 9:24Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty students because they always use students,
- 9:28Speaker 1: they asked three hundred and sixty students to compete in
- 9:30Speaker 1: groups of six for three hundred games. Oh my god,
- 9:34Speaker 1: it feels like it would get a little exhausting, and
- 9:37Speaker 1: they wanted to measure how students responded. So part of
- 9:41Speaker 1: this is they were testing a game theory called the
- 9:43Speaker 1: Nash equilibrium theory, and the Nash equilibrium theory predicts that
- 9:48Speaker 1: in a system with random outcomes such as this one,
- 9:51Speaker 1: people will throw random gestures evenly distributed across the options
- 9:56Speaker 1: that they have. So there should be just about a
- 9:58Speaker 1: third of the time you get one gesture, a third
- 10:00Speaker 1: at the time to get another gesture, a third of
- 10:02Speaker 1: the time you get the third gesture, and that those
- 10:04Speaker 1: are going to happen fairly randomly. Actually, people would just
- 10:06Speaker 1: kind of throw those gestures.
- 10:08Speaker 2: Yeah. However, that's not what was what they observed. Although
- 10:12Speaker 2: the distributions were fairly even, roughly thirty three percent per gesture,
- 10:15Speaker 2: or about a third chances random chance, rock was slightly
- 10:18Speaker 2: favored as closer to thirty six percent, although this was
- 10:22Speaker 2: not statistically significant. Further, and most importantly, people were more
- 10:26Speaker 2: likely to use the same gesture if they had just
- 10:28Speaker 2: won using that gesture, and were more likely to change
- 10:31Speaker 2: their gesture if they lost using that gesture.
- 10:34Speaker 1: So where the theory would have predicted that their choices
- 10:37Speaker 1: were random, that they would just sort of do whatever,
- 10:41Speaker 1: it wasn't random. It was actually governed by the consequences
- 10:45Speaker 1: of whether they lost or won using that gesture which
- 10:48Speaker 1: reminds me of something.
- 10:52Speaker 2: Interesting.
- 10:55Speaker 1: Oh, yes, this is operant learning. When the purpose is
- 10:58Speaker 1: to win, winning, it becomes a conditional reinforcer, and when
- 11:02Speaker 1: winning happens, it is more likely to select similar behavior. Yeah,
- 11:06Speaker 1: Whereas when a gesture fails, the loss functions as an
- 11:10Speaker 1: aversive consequence, the gesture is less likely to be used.
- 11:14Speaker 1: So it actually maps on perfectly with our observations and
- 11:17Speaker 1: understanding of choice making that people have, because that's how
- 11:21Speaker 1: behavior works, and we have seen it work a million
- 11:23Speaker 1: different ways, a million different times. And this is just
- 11:25Speaker 1: one more feather in the cap. I guess of a
- 11:28Speaker 1: successful theory that accurately describes human behavior.
- 11:31Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty pretty impressive.
- 11:33Speaker 1: Now.
- 11:33Speaker 2: Of course, people might reason their way to all sorts
- 11:35Speaker 2: of plan strategies, tactics, but in the end it remains
- 11:38Speaker 2: a simple, fast, easy to understand strategy for making a
- 11:41Speaker 2: choice between two things or two people, and for the
- 11:44Speaker 2: most part, it's very fair.
- 11:45Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 11:46Speaker 2: I will say this. Not too long ago, I did
- 11:48Speaker 2: say a fifteen symbol version of this. Have you seen
- 11:51Speaker 2: this version?
- 11:52Speaker 1: I've not seen this?
- 11:53Speaker 2: No, okay, it is just so everybody is clear on this.
- 11:57Speaker 2: It is rock gun lightning, devil, dragon, water, air, paper, sponge, wolf, tree, human, snake, scissors, fire.
- 12:05Speaker 1: That's so many and does that just start over like.
- 12:08Speaker 2: It's yeah, I just get it just goes back. So like,
- 12:11Speaker 2: so basically rock beats fire, fire beats scissors, scissors beats snakes,
- 12:15Speaker 2: snake beats human, which it's great, human beats tree, tree
- 12:19Speaker 2: beats wolf, wolf beats sponge, sponge beats paper, paper beats air,
- 12:24Speaker 2: air beats water, water beats dragon, dragon beats devil, devil
- 12:28Speaker 2: beats lightning, lightning beats gun, and then gun beats rock.
- 12:31Speaker 1: I don't understand the logic of that, but okay, and.
- 12:33Speaker 2: Then they all are related, so like every I think
- 12:36Speaker 2: every action can beat five and then gets beaten by
- 12:39Speaker 2: six or something like that. Wild, Okay, it's something weird
- 12:42Speaker 2: like that.
- 12:42Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, weird, strange, Okay, fun, well, yeah, I mean
- 12:47Speaker 1: I think you know, the purpose of this is just
- 12:49Speaker 1: like it's kind of a fun thing. It's interesting that
- 12:50Speaker 1: this is a thing that's existed as long as it
- 12:52Speaker 1: has and it does also kind of make sense, like
- 12:54Speaker 1: it's it's simple, it's very easy to do, it's very
- 12:57Speaker 1: easy to understand the rules, and people use a lot
- 12:59Speaker 1: of time to be like, all right, who's gonna be
- 13:01Speaker 1: the person who unloads the groceries from the car? Rock? Paper, scissors,
- 13:05Speaker 1: or they'll say, you know, row shambau. They're like, who
- 13:08Speaker 1: is the person who gets to open presence first? Row shamba?
- 13:11Speaker 1: And then they'll if it's a quick you know, the
- 13:14Speaker 1: winner gets the thing or the loser has to do
- 13:17Speaker 1: the thing. Whatever the situation takes five seconds to do.
- 13:20Speaker 1: Everyone understands how it works, and like there is some
- 13:23Speaker 1: kind of interesting unpacking of how this relates to human behavior.
- 13:27Speaker 1: As we said, like technically rock is slightly favored, I
- 13:31Speaker 1: would guess I would guess that part of the reason
- 13:34Speaker 1: that rock is is slightly favored more often is your
- 13:37Speaker 1: fist is already in the shape of rock when you start,
- 13:41Speaker 1: and it is therefore the lowest effort gesture that you
- 13:44Speaker 1: can throw. And if you're trying to think while you're
- 13:48Speaker 1: you're preparing to play, while you're doing the downward gestures,
- 13:51Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out, like what is my opponent
- 13:53Speaker 1: gonna throw? How can I win? If you haven't made
- 13:55Speaker 1: a decision, you can just leave your hand in a fist,
- 13:58Speaker 1: and so like, I I think that's probably why it's
- 14:01Speaker 1: slightly more favored is that it's the least effort, the
- 14:05Speaker 1: least committal choice that you can make. And it's sort
- 14:07Speaker 1: of I think falls in line with and we've talked
- 14:10Speaker 1: about before that like sometimes people generally feel better about
- 14:17Speaker 1: not taking action and having things go badly than taking
- 14:21Speaker 1: action and having the potential for things to go badly. Right,
- 14:24Speaker 1: So like they're like, I would rather not risk doing
- 14:29Speaker 1: something and having a bad outcome than doing nothing and
- 14:31Speaker 1: having a bad outcome because at least I didn't actively
- 14:34Speaker 1: cause it. And so I think there's probably like a
- 14:36Speaker 1: sort of related feature of this, But anyway, point being that,
- 14:40Speaker 1: like the basic principle here is the successful thing happens
- 14:44Speaker 1: more often, the unsuccessful thing happens less often. This does
- 14:47Speaker 1: bring me back to yet another example of why I
- 14:49Speaker 1: hate so much, the saying the past behavior is the
- 14:52Speaker 1: best predicular future behavior. I'm like, not if you lost
- 14:54Speaker 1: at Rock, paper scissors, because based on that saying, if
- 14:57Speaker 1: you lost, that's the best predictor of you doing that
- 15:00Speaker 1: same thing again, And the data clearly show it's not
- 15:02Speaker 1: you're actually going to do something different because you learned it.
- 15:05Speaker 1: It's the the past learning is the best predictor of
- 15:07Speaker 1: future behavior, right, and that's saying is dumb? Just one
- 15:10Speaker 1: more thing I think to the icing on the cake here.
- 15:13Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it's reasonable. I think it's fair.
- 15:15Speaker 1: All right, Well, I think that's what we have to
- 15:16Speaker 1: say about rock paper scissors. Anything you would like to
- 15:19Speaker 1: add before we wrap this one up?
- 15:20Speaker 2: No, you want to do one more round?
- 15:21Speaker 1: Uh? Okay, let's see if we go now that I
- 15:24Speaker 1: was less like.
- 15:25Speaker 2: Yeah, ready, all right, rock paper scissors. Shoot we did
- 15:29Speaker 2: it again again.
- 15:31Speaker 1: Okay, scissors people.
- 15:33Speaker 2: Apparently we're scissors brothers.
- 15:39Speaker 1: Oh boy? All right. Well, if you'd like to tell
- 15:41Speaker 1: us your thoughts on rock paper scisors, you can email
- 15:43Speaker 1: us directly at info WWDWWD podcast dot com. You can
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- 16:00Speaker 1: of them so much. You can also, as I said,
- 16:03Speaker 1: tell a friend. That's a helpful way to spread it about.
- 16:05Speaker 1: Thank you so much to my team of people for
- 16:07Speaker 1: helping me make this writing in fact checking from Shane
- 16:09Speaker 1: and myself, our social media coordinator Zimma Wilson, our audio
- 16:12Speaker 1: engineer executive producer is Justin and thank you for recording
- 16:15Speaker 1: with me today.
- 16:16Speaker 2: Shane. Yeah, thank you for having me. This is so fun, perfect.
- 16:18Speaker 1: All right, Well, I think that's all you have to say.
- 16:20Speaker 1: Happy rock, paper scissoring and it's Shane better on this
- 16:27Speaker 1: one now. Why we Do what we Do many is out.
- 16:28Speaker 2: Bye.
- 16:30Speaker 3: You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
- 16:32Speaker 3: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
- 16:35Speaker 3: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening and
- 16:40Speaker 3: we hope you have an awesome day.
- 17:00Speaker 2: Zero