All inhabitants know that the electricity company will fix the problem as long as at least one person calls to notify them, at some cost.
[1] A public good is only produced if at least one person volunteers to pay an arbitrary cost.
Because the volunteer receives no benefit, there is a greater incentive for freeriding than to sacrifice oneself for the group.
The social phenomena of the bystander effect and diffusion of responsibility heavily relate to the volunteer's dilemma.
In a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium, an increase in N players will decrease the likelihood that at least one person volunteers, which is consistent with the bystander effect.
Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment building in Queens, New York, in 1964.
[2] Subsequent investigations have shown the original account to have been unfounded, and although it inspired sound scientific research, its use as a simplistic parable in psychology textbooks has been criticized.
If a predator approaches, the sentry meerkat lets out a warning call so the others can burrow to safety.
It is shown that for classical mixed strategies setting, there is a unique symmetric Nash equilibrium and it is obtained by setting the probability of volunteering for each player to be the unique root in the open interval (0,1) of the degree-n polynomial
This generalizes the classical setting by allowing players to utilize quantum strategies.