The first time I heard about Game Theory was in a movie. My psychology class was watching "A Beautiful Mind" which gives a detailed account of the life of a troubled mathematician named John Nash. Nash suffered from schizophrenia which affected his mental psyche for a period of almost two decades; however, he managed to make some great achievements in the fields of mathematics and economics, resulting in the development of a complicated mathematical theory based on non-cooperative games. After his paper was published, Nash was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in Economics.
Although game theory is usually applied to economics and taught in most introductory courses some modern scholars have begun applying the theory to other areas of study. Howard Reigngold is researching how humans have grown and collaborated over the past ten thousand years to become the complex civilization of today. Reigngold proposed that methods of collaboration must have been used by early Neanderthals in order to accomplish the truly awesome feats of their time. Mastodons would have been nearly impossible to hunt and capture alone, yet we know humans captured and ate them to extinction. Therefore, interaction and dependence must have occurred frequently in social communities. Based on that fact alone, scholars like Reigngold have started analyzing these interactions based on Game Theory and are applying them to both the past and the potential of our future.
I personally never thought Game Theory would be applied to anything outside of a mathematics based field, but you learn something new everyday.
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