The toilet seat problem
You know the one. Us men prefer to leave the toilet seat in the last used position, and women prefer it in the down position. This clearly is not a problem until a man and woman cohabit and share the same toilet.
Well, here’s an economic analysis of the toilet seat problem.
In this paper, we internalize the cost of yelling and model the conflict as a non-cooperative game between two species, males and females.We find that the social norm of leaving the toilet seat down is inefficient. However, to our dismay, we also find that the social norm of always leaving the toilet seat down after use is not only a Nash equilibrium in pure strategies but is also trembling-hand perfect. So, we can complain all we like, but this norm is not likely to go away.
My SO always yells at me for leaving the seat up, too. She grants that it may be inefficient, but argues that it is better from an aesthetic perspective. Very well, then, I implement the “toilet lid solution” (see Remark 6 at the end of this older paper). You may think it spiteful but if aesthetics is what she truly wants (instead of offloading all toilet seat operations onto me) she should be happy, no?
(via BoingBoing)
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