{"id":6110,"date":"2026-03-01T22:34:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T20:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/?p=6110"},"modified":"2026-04-03T19:55:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:55:57","slug":"the-mystery-of-the-ultimatum-game-why-we-are-predictably-irrational-by-kobayashi-kayoko","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/2026\/03\/01\/the-mystery-of-the-ultimatum-game-why-we-are-predictably-irrational-by-kobayashi-kayoko\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery of the Ultimatum Game: Why We Are Predictably Irrational<\/em> by Kobayashi Kayoko"},"content":{"rendered":"

First and foremost, this book is about our present knowledge on empathy, altruism, punishment, and fairness as human behaviors, developed along scientific findings around game theory in general and variations of the ultimatum and dictator games in particular.<\/p>\n

If you have no idea what game theory and these games are about, this book is for you. If game theory and these games are already familiar to you but not from original research papers, this book is even more for you!<\/p>\n

While its style is a bit too didactical and redundant to my taste (and suffers from a certain attributitis where referenced researchers are always \u201crenowned,\u201d \u201cfamous,\u201d \u201cprominent,\u201d \u201ceminent,\u201d and the like), it\u2019s very thorough. It also keeps track, meticulously and honestly, of contradicting research outcomes, conflicting interpretations, and all kinds of issues stemming from the replication crisis, convenience samples, and the focus on WEIRDs. Plus, it provides well-placed caveats of how observed behavioral typicalities might be a product of social positions, status, and similar instead of systematic differences as neurological\/biological adaptations.<\/p>\n

Initially, I feared the worst when the introduction made clear that Kobayashi would effectively use evolutionary psychology for her general argument, but it turned out to be fine. The first five out of six chapters fully rely on research from anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and honest-to-goodness psychologists and evolutionary biologists, except for one passing mention of Pinker in a footnote that doesn\u2019t do any harm.<\/p>\n

The references to evolutionary psychology, then, fall into the sixth and final chapter. Here, Kobayashi develops her argument that seemingly \u201cirrational\u201d behavior doesn\u2019t fall into the rational vs. irrational dichotomy but rather into Gigerenzer et al.\u2019s framework of \u201cadaptive rationality\u201d\u2014a framework in close proximity to Simon\u2019s and Allais\u2019s concept of bounded rationality on the economic modeling side, and Kendrick\u2019s concept of deep rationality on the evopsych side. All in all, this is much better handled than I thought it would be. Indeed, I\u2019m very sympathetic to Kobayashi\u2019s general argument; I just think that evopsych is a problem factory and that her argument could have been made\u2014and indeed can<\/em> be made\u2014without it.<\/p>\n

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Kobayashi Kayoko. The Mystery of the Ultimatum Game: Why We Are Predictably Irrational<\/em>. Springer Nature, 2025. Translated and updated from: \u5c0f\u6797\u3000\u4f73\u4e16\u5b50\u3002\u6700\u5f8c\u901a\u7252\u30b2\u30fc\u30e0\u306e\u8b0e\uff1a\u9032\u5316\u5fc3\u7406\u5b66\u304b\u3089\u307f\u305f\u884c\u52d5\u30b2\u30fc\u30e0\u7406\u8ad6\u5165\u9580\u3002\u65e5\u672c\u8a55\u8ad6\u793e\u30012021\u5e749\u6708\u3002<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ud83d\udcda Excellent primer with an argument and a view.<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-archive","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6110"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6372,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110\/revisions\/6372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}