The games people play

In honour of St. Valentine's, yesterday was promotion-wide Traffic Light Day. The idea was to wear clothing that would communicate your relationship (non)-status to the community-at-large: green if you're ready to play, yellow if you're not quite sure but are willing to consider what's on offer, red if you're in a committed relationship. A nifty if rather in-your-face idea for introducing some clarity into the social hotpot that is b-school, where breakups-and-hookups are par for the course.

Interestingly, the most common colour worn was red. Probably an accurate indicator of official status, but I suspect that the social / emotional status of many of these would veer towards yellow in all its vulnerable glory. The true greens were mostly in hiding, while the rest of us simply didn't play along. Even in technicolour, it's difficult to wear your heart on your sleeve.

Which is what makes flirting such an alluring and potentially dangerous game. Especially at parties, where a combination of alcohol and limited physical space makes it easier to expand your normal social boundaries. The most extreme example I have seen of this is a girl whose dancing indiscretion is matched only by her indiscrimination towards dancing partners. The fact that few people would have raised an eyebrow at her red outfit yesterday suggests either that there need not be any correlation between your actual and perceived degree of availability, or that she didn't read the memo.

The flip side of this is the difficulty of knowing when flirting has been taken to the next level. Which is the null hypothesis? Our statistics professor might suggest that the worse error would be to wrongly assume that somebody is merely being friendly. But what if you assume the reverse? Depending on your own inclination, either you back off and miss out on some good harmless fun, or you reciprocate to your own peril.

Throw game theory into the mix, and everything gets kicked up a notch. What should you assume the other party assumes, and how should you react to motivate the desired response? Short of economic and statistical modelling, Traffic Light Day might just about be the next best but wholly inadequate guide to social interactions.