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A New Leaf for the Looking Glass 2026/27

Dear all, Upon inheriting the Looking Glass from our predecessors, we identified a number of key issues. Firstly, there were simply not enough articles being published, due both to a lack of submissions from the school community and limited responsiveness from the previous Academic Team. Secondly, the Looking Glass had not been advertised or explained effectively enough to the wider school community. As a result, we plan to implement a more consistent and engaging stream of articles on the Looking Glass. As part of this initiative, we are looking to recruit a select group of keen writers from across the lower school who would be willing to produce one high-quality piece of writing, discussion, or media each month for publication on the Looking Glass. We believe this will be hugely beneficial both to the school community, which will gain access to a wider range of opinions and viewpoints, and to prospective writers, who will be able to reference their experience contributing to the Look...
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Economics: Split or Steal? The surprising Economic Theory behind the decision-making


Note: The following article was written by Shaunak Punekar L6B (20punekars@students.watfordboys.org)


Recently, a YouTube video popped up on my recommended with over 15 million views. The video in question is a clip of a British game show called Golden Balls, or more commonly referred to as “Split or Steal”. The premise of the game is very simple: two contestants each have two balls, one that says “split” and the other says “steal”. There is a prize pot of £13.600 and the contestants are asked to put forward one ball. If both contestants choose to put forward “split”, the money will be split, and both contestants will walk away from the game with £6800. If one contestant picks “split” and the other picks “steal”, the latter will walk away with the whole prize pot of £13600 and the former will walk away with nothing. Likewise, if both choose “steal”, both contestants walk away with nothing.




To summarise the video, the contestant on the left (Nick) starts by attempting to convince the contestant on the right (Ibrahim) to pick up by continuing to insist that he will pick steal. Ibrahim is naturally suspicious of Nick's true intentions, mentioning that Nick would most likely pickpocket and then leave him empty-handed. Nick repeatedly argues that he will steal the money regardless of Ibrahim's decision, and it is in Ibrahim’s best interests to let Nick take the money. After the show, Nick promises to give Ibrahim his share of the cash. After intense negotiations, the contestants reveal that they have both decided to split the money and that Nick's strategy has worked. While this does make for engaging entertainment value (the video has garnered over 15 million views), the video does actually exemplify a key economic theory - that of game theory and more specifically the prisoners' dilemma.  




Let's assume we have 2 individuals (A and B) who have been accused of a crime. It is clear to the police that only one of them has committed the crime, yet only the two individuals know which of them has committed it. The police can question both individuals: they can either testify against the other or choose to remain silent. If both prisoners decide to testify against each other, both will get 3 years in jail. If only one testifies and the other doesn’t, then the one who testified goes free, and the other is sent to prison for 10 years. If neither testifies, they are presumed to be working together, and so they both get 1 year in jail. I have produced a table below to easier visualise this:

From this, we can see that if an individual chooses to testify, they will either face 0 years or 3 years imprisonment, whereas if they choose to remain silent, they will receive 1 year or 10 years imprisonment. Clearly a rational individual would choose to testify in all cases, thus proving the prisoner's dilemma experiment. We can apply this to our split or steal example by placing ourselves in the perspective of Ibrahim. Nick has promised that he will choose “steal” no matter what. For Ibrahim, he can either choose to steal himself, in which case they are both guaranteed to leave with nothing or choose to split and hope that Nick shares with him. With this in mind, it makes sense why Ibrahim chooses to eventually chance a split rather than steal. 




Finally, another example as to the prominence of game theory in this exact scenario can be seen in a 2012 research paper conducted by Erasmus University and Chicago University. After analysing more than 287 episodes from 2007 to 2009, they found that players chose to cooperate around 53% of the time, which is consistent  with traditional economic analysis, which shows the accuracy of economic models to predict human behaviour




Overall, it is interesting that a game show made for entertainment can also help explain economic theory. Using economic models in simple real-life situations makes it easier to understand human behaviour. As the research paper showed, people’s decisions can often be more predictable than we might expect.

`


Sources: 


Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma 


Split or steal original video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8


More info on Game Theory - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM


Mathematical analysis on the prisoner's dilemma - https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2012/09/21/split-or-steal-an-analysis-using-game-theory/


2012 research paper - https://repub.eur.nl/pub/31292/SplitorSteal_2012.pdf

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