Author: Yun Lin

Imagine this scene: you are doing grocery shopping at a supermarket, and you heard people talking about the high probability of another round of lockdowns due to coronavirus; moreover, you saw many empty shelves and super long lineups at the checkout. Will you just continue to finish your grocery shopping as normal? Or will you act like some other people in the supermarket to buy as many hand sanitizers and toilet paper rolls as you can?

Consumer’s perception of the scarcity of products could make panic buying happen during a pandemic(Yuen, Wang, Ma, & Li, 2020). Let’s take toilet paper as an example, and the decision of having toilet paper hoarding or not actually can be described as a game:

•  Two players: player A and player B
• Both would like to have the toilet paper (i.e. have toilet paper now or be able to buy toilet paper  from the supermarket) for a longer time
• Players need to play one of the following strategies: Strategy X is to buy as much toilet paper as possible right away; Strategy Y is to only buy the amount of toilet paper as usual because the players believe they would be able to buy toilet paper from the supermarket next time
• The supermarket does not increase the stock of toilet paper

In this game, each player’s payoff depends on players’ consumption behaviour. Assume that both players are selfish and would like to prioritize their own stock of toilet paper. Then both players will choose Strategy Y instead of Strategy X no matter what strategy the other player choose (i.e. for player A, (X, Y) > (Y, Y) and (X, X) > (Y, X); for player B, (Y, X) > (Y, Y) and (X, X) > (X, Y)). And we can also assume that both players understand that (Y, Y)>(X, X).

The payoff matrix could look like this:

We find the Nash equilibrium at (X, X). Players try to maximize their payoff, however, everyone ends up getting the payoff of 1. This is the same situation as the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Players will find themselves in a worse state if both of them choose to buy as much toilet paper as possible.

From this game, we may learn that have less panic buying during this pandemic can help you and everyone has a better payoff. 

Reference:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/62f0014m/62f0014m2020004-eng.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7277661/

https://www.quantumuniverse.nl/the-toilet-paper-dilemma

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/30/what-would-freud-make-of-the-toilet-paper-panic

When work from home and study from online courses become many people’s new daily life, you may find out that being active and keeping in touch with people start to become harder and harder. While practicing social distancing is crucial and required to beat the coronavirus in many countries, being socially connected is still very important for people’s mental health. You probably put much more efforts than ever to stay in touch with your close friends, family and colleagues during this stressful period. However, even you can make more texts or video calls with the family and close friends, surprisingly you may find yourself start missing lots of interactions with people, especially, with strangers or some people you barely know. How come? It’s actually quite normal because you are probably missing your weak ties.

Many people do not realize that they actually belong to a much wider and complex social network than they believe they belong to. According to Robin Dunbar’s study, the average number of individuals’ stable social relationship is 150. Only around 50 of 150 relationships can be defined as the close network, the remaining are likely to be counted as your weak tie relationships. Think of the barista that you have small conversations many times a week, the the people you meet when you walk the dogs, or some people you see at the gym, they are all your weak ties. 

Some people think maintaining the weak ties relationship could be useless, but the truth is that weak ties play an important role in everyone’s life. Baumeister and Leary point out that human being needs belongingness, the fully satisfying relationship.Weak ties relationship greatly help people to expand their friend circle and feel less alone. Moreover, weak ties could bring people more information and opportunities. Mark Granovetter’s study shows people could find some unique job opening information from their weak tie network. Also, Gillian and Elizabeth’s study shows that the interactions with people’s weak ties network could even contribute more happiness to individuals than people interactive with close friends or family members. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing may let everyone has a high chance of losing some parts or even all of these weak tie interactions. According to the article Why You Miss Those Casual Friends So Much, people normally will have around 11 to 16 interactions with their weak ties each day. Stay connected with your strong ties is obviously crucial and beneficial. Still, you can keep in mind the importance of the weak ties and maintaining your weak ties could bring you some additional surprises. 

Sources:

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/Why%20You%20Miss%20Those%20Casual%20Friends%20So%20Much_940e56d6-f06e-4feb-831d-c17a6a00f1b4.pdf

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167214529799

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1995-29052-001