Lynne Kiesling
A game-theoretic analysis of one of the most enduring conflicts between men and women: toilet seat up or down? This paper in the Science Creative Quarterly provides a game-theoretic analysis that incorporates the cost of the domestic dissent, specifically, the cost to the male of the yelling that will ensue when the female finds the toilet seat up.
… If a female finds the toilet seat in a wrong position then she will most probably yell at the male involved. This yelling inflicts a cost on the male. Based on this omission, women may argue that the analysis in these papers is suspect.
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.
In addition to being a clever and well-written short piece, this article references an excellent paper by a former NU graduate student: Azar, Ofer H. (2005), “Who Do We Tip and Why? An Empirical Investigation,” Applied Economics, 37(16), 1871-1879.