Game Theory

Game theory, introduced to the public relations literature in the 1980s, underpins a conflict-to-cooperation continuum used to classify communicators’ motives. Game theory inspired the reconceptualization of public relations’ normative two-way symmetrical practice model. Overall, game theory approaches may enhance decision-making and relationship-maintenance skills among various constituents, enabling practitioners to navigate complex systems and to make public relations more ethical and professional.

Game theory has a rich history and long has been embraced among the social sciences of psychology, management science, and political science. Games is a metaphor applied to a wide range of human interactions that depend on how two or more persons (and other entities) directly and strategically relate with one another. This approach to modeling human behavior was developed in 1944 by mathematician John von Neumann and mathematical economist Oskar Morgenstern. Rational choice theory provides game theory's underpinnings, and it has been invoked in debates on complex policy issues such as market competition, arms races, and environmental pollution. Game theory resonates with public relations theorists and applied practitioners because understanding the balance of influence between an organization and its constituents is central to doing public relations well and ethically.

Specifically, game theory enabled public relations researchers to expand the range of communication behaviors by redefining symmetric communication (games of pure cooperation)—which rarely happens in actual public relations practice even though many theorists agree that it is preferable to asymmetric communication (zero-sum games). To illustrate, whereas a three-legged race might be classified as a game of pure cooperation (or nonzero-sum game), a tug of war is a zero-sum game because there exists a direct correlation between participants’ performance; the better one player does, the other performs incrementally worse. Since game theory was added to the public relations literature, two-way symmetric communication has been redefined as a “mixed-motive” behavior. Such a framework maintains that while organizations may have asymmetrical self-interest concerns at the core of all behaviors, each is motivated toward cooperation in order to resolve or to reduce some aspects of conflict associated with relationship building and maintenance.

Game theory inspired crisis communication researchers to consider multiple perspectives and to avoid binary dualisms that limit the full range of possible communication behaviors (Murphy, 1989, 1991); that perspective expanded to account for organizations’ permeable boundaries and complex systems (Gilpin & Murphy, 2008). Many have argued that public relations practice should not be forced to fit into one of four models (press agentry, information, asymmetry, and symmetry) because it is a profession and an arena of academic inquiry that involve many variables that [Page 382]interact in complex and vibrant ways. For example, it may be prudent to maintain some degree of tension (as compared to pure cooperation or total accommodation) among competing interests that are at ideological odds in order to foster continuing dialogue needed to achieve a desired outcome that may never have a final conclusion.

Game theory thinking advances ethical decision making, accommodates strategic planning, and promotes professionalism. Game structures are used to analyze crisis communication issues and to navigate seven principles of complex systems that affect crisis management: interacting agents, adaptability, self-organization, instability, influence of history, permeable boundaries, and irreducibility. Such analyses of organization-constituent relationships in times of crisis may be used to determine what went wrong and to explain why. Also applying game theory to strategic planning enables practitioners to confidently examine what-ifs and best-/worst-case scenarios, as well as to develop strategic alliances and build coalitions. The game becomes a negotiation involving commodities, strategic trades, and concessions, wherein, optimally, there are no clear-cut winners or losers. Since game models involve determining all possible consequences and a full range of potential behaviors, public relations practitioners may more clearly examine the ethical implications of their counsel.

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