When they used a computer program to compare exchanges between players whose relationships ended in betrayal with those whose relationships lasted, the computer discerned subtle signals of impending betrayal. Betrayal is so integral to Diplomacy that, as noted on a “This American Life” episode, stabbing an ally in the back is referred to by the shorthand “stabbing.”ĭanescu-Niculescu-Mizil, colleague and fan-of-the-game Jordan Boyd-Graber, and colleagues examined 249 games of Diplomacy with a total of 145,000 messages among players. There’s only diplomacy: a negotiation phase where players converse, form alliances and gather intelligence (these days, typically online), and a movement phase where everyone’s decisions are revealed and executed all at once. But chance is removed from the equation players don’t roll dice or take turns. Set in Europe before World War I, the nations/players have to form alliances to win. Kennedy and Henry Kissinger reportedly were fans). Unlike Risk and other war games, Diplomacy is all about, well, diplomacy (John F. But like many relationships that collapse in betrayal, teasing out what goes wrong and who is at fault isn’t so easy. And he was right: Studying the patterns of communication between the players revealed that betrayal is sometimes foreseeable. So when Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil heard about a Diplomacy, a strategy game rife with betrayal, he figured it might serve as a good proxy for real life treachery. “But finding relevant data is really hard.” “We all know betrayal exists,” says Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, a computer scientist at Cornell University who spends a lot of time thinking about what language reveals about relationships. (Consider all the complications of a study that asks people in trusted relationships to betray each other.) Case studies of real betrayals can provide insight after-the-fact, but without a time machine, finding studies that reveal big picture patterns about the lead-up to treachery are scarce. While most of us are familiar with betrayal, investigating it is really hard. In fact, betrayers have a special place in hell, literarily: In Dante’s Inferno, they occupy the ninth and final circle mere fraudsters dwell in the eighth. It’s usually unexpected, and it yields a unique, often irreparable, wound. Unlike garden-variety deception, betrayal happens in established relationships, destroying trust that has developed over time. Whether it’s Katy Perry poaching dancers from once-BFF Taylor Swift or Clytemnestra orchestrating the murder of her husband Agamemnon, betrayal is a dark, persistent part of the human condition.
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