Kiasu-ism and the Prisoner’s Dilemma

If you have been to or are from Singapore, you might have chanced upon the term “kiasu”, used to describe Singaporean culture, behaviour or attitude. The word “kiasu” comes from the Hokkien dialect, which directly translates to “scared to lose”, or 怕输 (pà shū) in Simplified Chinese, and has become colloquialised as part of the Singlish (Singaporean-English) vocabulary.

A person governed by self-interest, typically manifesting as a selfish, grasping attitude arising from a fear of missing out on something. Also: such an attitude.

~ Oxford English Dictionary

Often, this phrase is used in a negative context, used to criticise and jab at one’s actions for being overly selfish, unwelcomingly competitive or FOMO.

“Wah! He queue for the famous chicken rice since 8am? Kiasu sia!”
“She’s studying for the chapters that are exempted? Kiasu sia!”

For how much we Singaporeans criticise kiasu behaviours, it is difficult for some to name examples off the top of their heads immediately, myself included.

It turns out that kiasu is harder to pinpoint than we might think. Some examples listed by my peers include: Jostling into trains to secure a seat, using tissue paper packets to chope (reserve) seats at a food court, hoarding freebies and the infamous existence of the abominable website kiasuparents.com

Even this list proved to be problematic. Some could not agree with certain elements constituting kiasu behaviour. Thus, although calling out kiasu behaviour upon seeing it is easy, Singaporeans ourselves might be uncertain of the definition and boundaries of kiasu-ness. I can conceive of 2 reasons why this might be the case.

1. We are desensitised to kiasu actions that manifest in our surroundings every day. It just happens so frequently that we do not bother to notice and record instances of kiasu-isms into our ready-to-go list of kiasu behaviours.

2. More importantly, kiasu is not so much of behaviours and actions. It is a principle that governs decision-making, culture and Singaporean lives. We live, eat and sleep kiasu. It is ingrained into the social fabric of Singapore and the minds of Singaporeans. It is the air of competitiveness and self-interest that is difficult to put one’s finger on.

My goal is to understand what kiasu-ism is, perhaps through the lens of economics.

Singaporeans’ obsession with queuing commonly labelled as kiasu behaviour.

Despite frowning upon the self-interested behaviours I had witnessed, I found myself shamefully doing the same shortly afterwards.

Kiasu actions are sometimes frowned upon, not necessarily because they are intrinsically disdainful, but sometimes because they reinforce societal kiasu norms and the vicious cycle of kiasu-ism, compelling non-participants to partake in the action as well: rushing forward for a better view, queuing for things one didn’t care for, studying for exempted chapters, etc.

Partaking in that kiasu action would be my best action against yours and vice-versa. This reminds me of Game Theory and the Nash equilibrium.

Enter the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Imagine a scenario where two prisoners are convicted of a crime they committed together. In each box, the number of years sentenced to prison is shown for the respective actions of each prisoner.

For example, if prisoner 1 confesses to the crime and prisoner 2 lies about the crime, we refer to the box in the top-right. From this, we see that prisoner 1 gets away scot-free for his honesty with 0 years in prison, while prisoner 2 gets sentenced to 10 years in prison (-10 years of “freedom”) for lying.

Depending on the actions of each prisoner, the benefits (or lack thereof) for both of them will vary.

Let us make the critical assumption that the prisoners are rational and self-interested (they only care about their own benefit and make decisions to maximise it).

We imagine ourselves as prisoner 1. If our accomplice, prisoner 2, decides to confess, our best strategy that yields us the most freedom (and least jail time) is to confess as well, given that we will be sentenced to 8 years behind bars rather than 10. If our fellow colleague decides to lie about the crime, we might be inclined to lie as well. However, a rational and self-interested prisoner will choose to confess to the crime as he gets away scot-free compared to 1 year in jail. Prisoner 1’s dominant strategy is to confess, regardless of the actions of his accomplice.

Since the table above is symmetrical to both prisoners, if we run through the same thought process above for prisoner 2, we find the same conclusion: prisoner 2 will confess. Even though there was an option for both prisoners to collude and lie to receive a much lighter total punishment of 2 years (1 year each), the Nash equilibrium lies where both prisoners rationally confess to the crime, landing them both in jail for a total of 16 years. This will be the definite outcome under the assumptions mentioned above.

Isn’t this reminiscent of the New Year’s Eve fireworks show?

For simplicity, we reduce the hundreds of spectators to just two. The best total outcome will be for both people to sit on the ground. It yields the highest total benefit for both players of 12 units. This would be the ideal situation. What I saw on that day was the manifestation of the Nash equilibrium of (Stand, Stand), which yielded a lower total benefit of 6 units.

There were in fact rules in place, tacit or explicit, to implore people to converge on this (Sit, Sit) outcome, or at least to minimise hindrance to others.

To ensure public safety and enjoyment of all visitors, the following actions and/or activities at Marina Barrage are not allowed:

1. Setting up of structures including portable tables, chairs, cones, inflatable couches, tents, tying of banners etc.

~ Public Space Etiquette at Marina Barrage, PUB

Retrieved from https://www.pub.gov.sg/Public/Places-of-Interest/Marina-Barrage/Visitors-Information/Public-Space-Etiquette

Authorities were deployed that evening to enforce the above (though most efforts were futile).

Like many, I would assume that there is a general tacit agreement to be gracious and aware of how our actions impact others, or in this case, diminish the benefit of viewing the fireworks to others. Graciousness and communal living are concepts taught to Singaporeans since young and a sense of duty to uphold one’s negative duty to not inconvenience others is inculcated in us. But here, I notice the flagrant flouting of implied social contracts and blatant disregard for others.

When the original agreement to cooperate is violated, the game becomes a free-for-all. Previously civic-minded spectators shift their priorities from fulfilling the obligation to uphold the social contract to maximising personal benefit in a bout of self-interest. People stand, jostle, push and shove — the Nash equilibrium manifests on a scale of hundreds.

Here I propose: the essence of kiasu-ism is the high probability of Singaporeans to default on socially optimal agreements in the spirit of self-interest.

Just as we flout tacit agreements to not block the view of fireworks for others, we violate socially optimal norms to line up neatly before entering the MRT train, to let our children have a magical childhood instead of cramming their schedules with tuition for an edge over other kids, just so that we can hopefully maximise our child’s benefit in the future.

This is why we can’t have nice things in Singapore. An education system that is not overly competitive, litter-free beaches, orderly queues for public transport.

One prominent example is the sudden surge of bike-sharing services in 2017. Companies such as Ofo, Mobike, Anywheel and SG Bike entered the public arena by providing bicycles, charging on a pay-per-use basis. Wasn’t this such a blessing? Services were provided at reasonable prices, were extremely accessible, and allowed users to travel and exercise simultaneously.

With the rise of this service which brought a significant benefit to society came a slew of violations of tacit social agreements to use the service graciously. In pursuit of self-interest or amusement, a 14 year old was filmed throwing an Ofo bicycle down a HDB block, as reported by The Straits Times.

When the socially optimal outcome would have been to use the bikes normally (40 units of utility), the culprit defected in pursuit of self-interest (21 > 20), lowering our total benefit to society to -29 units. If other users had followed suit, we would have ended up with 0 net benefit to society, 40 units lower than in the case of cooperation.

Many other cases of vandalism and theft arose during that period, which contributed to the downfall of the bike-sharing industry. Frankly disappointing behaviour from citizens taught from young in school to embrace graciousness and communal living.

More than just the culprits themselves, we have to extend our scope to kiasu-ism as a culture. Viewed through an economic lens, kiasu-ism is the tendency to default on agreements with socially optimal outcomes. This might grant one greater personal benefit, but it also makes it worse for the rest of us.

But this seems insufficient in explaining the uniqueness of the kiasu culture in Singapore. Don’t we observe variations of selfish, excessively competitive culture in other countries? For example, the toilet paper shortage that resulted from the coronavirus panic in many countries in the world.

While a culture of competitive self-interest might manifest in other countries in various ways, I believe that it could be the unique circumstances in which this attitude is exhibited, which gives kiasu-ism a special name.

The heavy emphasis placed on academic excellence in Southeast Asian and East Asian countries, particularly in Singapore, is one of the primary platforms (among others) in which competitive attitudes manifest.

Written by  Cameron Loh

Edited by Ng Shang Wen