The Chicken Game
Chicken game is also known as Game of Chicken, Chicken, Hawk-dove. Besides Prisoner's dilemma, Stag Hunt, Battle of the Sexes, Chicken game is one of well-known analysed games from Game theory.
History
The Chicken story comes from the deadly teenage game of the 1950s, in which two teens (or groups of teens) drove their cars straight at each other to find out who would flinch first. The first to grab the wheel and swerve "lost" by showing that s/he lacked courage. Nevertheless, if one swerved and the other didn't, as in the upper right and lower left comers, the joint welfare of both parties was at its highest: the "hawk" could preen in his or her show of valor, while even the losing "dove" or "chicken" would still be alive, if embarrassed. The worst case, of course, was when nobody swerved and the cars crashed (lower right corner). If both swerved (upper left), the crash would not occur, but no one would be able to claim bravery, so that the "resource" of preening would go unexploited. Thus in Chicken as in Battle of the Sexes, there are two jointly maximizing results, but those results have unequal payoffs to the two players. The difference is that in Battle of the Sexes, the jointly maximizing solutions require both parties to follow a single strategy, even though one prefers it and the other does not. In Chicken, on the other hand, the parties must choose opposite strategies, with one deferring to the other to avoid the crash, while the other drives through and claims the reward.
Payoff matrix
| chicken/drive | swerve (chicken) | straight (drive) |
| swerve (chicken) | tie | lose,win |
| straight (drive) | win,lose | lose |
| chicken/drive | swerve (chicken) | straight (drive) |
| swerve (chicken) | 0, 0 | -1, +1 |
| straight (drive) | +1, -1 | -100, -100 |
