In game theory, the stag hunt, sometimes referred to as the assurance game, trust dilemma or common interest game, describes a conflict between safety and social cooperation. The stag hunt problem originated with philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality. In the most common account of this dilemma, which is quite different from Rousseau's, two hunters must decide separately, and without the other knowing, whether to hunt a stag or a hare. However, both hunters know the only way to successfully hunt a stag is with the other's help. One hunter can catch a hare alone with less effort and less time, but it is worth far less than a stag and has much less meat. It would be much better for each hunter, acting individually, to give up total autonomy and minimal risk, which brings only the small reward of the hare. Instead, each hunter should separately choose the more ambitious and far more rewarding goal of getting the stag, thereby giving up some autonomy in exchange for the other hunter's cooperation and added might. This situation is often seen as a useful analogy for many kinds of social cooperation, such as international agreements on climate change.
The stag hunt differs from the prisoner's dilemma in that there are two pure-strategy Nash equilibria: one where both players cooperate, and one where both players defect. In the Prisoner's Dilemma, in contrast, despite the fact that both players cooperating is Pareto efficient, the only pure Nash equilibrium is when both players choose to defect.
An example of the payoff matrix for the stag hunt is pictured in Figure 2.
Formal definition
Formally, a stag hunt is a game with two pure strategy Nash equilibria—one that is risk dominant and another that is payoff dominant. The payoff matrix in Figure 1 illustrates a generic stag hunt, where . Often, games with a similar structure but without a risk dominant Nash equilibrium are called assurance games. For instance if a=10, b=5, c=0, and d=2. While (Hare, Hare) remains a Nash equilibrium, it is no longer risk dominant. Nonetheless many would call this game a stag hunt.
In addition to the pure strategy Nash equilibria there is one mixed strategy Nash equilibrium. This equilibrium depends on the payoffs, but the risk dominance condition places a bound on the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium. No payoffs (that satisfy the above conditions including risk dominance) can generate a mixed strategy equilibrium where Stag is played with a probability higher than one half. The best response correspondences are pictured here.
The stag hunt and social cooperation
Although most authors focus on the prisoner's dilemma as the game that best represents the problem of social cooperation, some authors believe that the stag hunt represents an equally (or more) interesting context in which to study cooperation and its problems (for an overview see ).
There is a substantial relationship between the stag hunt and the prisoner's dilemma. In biology many circumstances that have been described as prisoner's dilemma might also be interpreted as a stag hunt, depending on how fitness is calculated.
It is also the case that some human interactions that seem like prisoner's dilemmas may in fact be stag hunts. For example, suppose we have a prisoner's dilemma as pictured in Figure 3. The payoff matrix would need adjusting if players who defect against cooperators might be punished for their defection. For instance, if the expected punishment is −2, then the imposition of this punishment turns the above prisoner's dilemma into the stag hunt given at the introduction.
Examples of the stag hunt
The original stag hunt dilemma is as follows: a group of hunters have tracked a large stag, and found it to follow a certain path. If all the hunters work together, they can kill the stag and all eat. If they are discovered, or do not cooperate, the stag will flee, and all will go hungry.
The hunters hide and wait along a path. An hour goes by, with no sign of the stag. Two, three, four hours pass, with no trace. A day passes. The stag may not pass every day, but the hunters are reasonably certain that it will come. However, a hare is seen by all hunters moving along the path.
If a hunter leaps out and kills the hare, he will eat, but the trap laid for the stag will be wasted and the other hunters will starve. There is no certainty that the stag will arrive; the hare is present. The dilemma is that if one hunter waits, he risks one of his fellows killing the hare for himself, sacrificing everyone else. This makes the risk twofold; the risk that the stag does not appear, and the risk that another hunter takes the kill.