Behavioral Game Theory

One of the more bizarre aspects of the recent US Presidential election campaign was the ability of Donald Trump to tell more lies and half-truths than most of us would do in a lifetime and yet still claim that Hilary Clinton could not be trusted in office. Even more bizarre, was the fact that he got away with it! How can we possible make sense of this? Some might point to a dumb electorate. I think we can learn more by looking at guilt aversion.              The concept of guilt aversion was formally introduced into game theory by Pierpaolo Battigalli and Martin Dufwenberg with a paper published in the American Economic Review in 2007. (I should also mention a paper  by Gary Charness and Martin Dufwenberg in Econometrica in 2006.) The basic idea is that a person only needs to feel guilt if they disappoint the expectations of others . To illustrate, consider Donald Trump's 'promise' to lock up Hilary Clinton. Nobody realistically expects Trump to fulfil this promise. Bu