Credibility
A threat or a promise counts only if carrying it out would still suit the person making it once the moment arrives.
Often misread asJudging a threat by how severe it is or how firmly it is stated, rather than by what the threatener would want at the moment of carrying it out.
How to see it
A threat is only worth making if you would carry it out
Threats and promises change behaviour only if the other side believes you would follow through. A threat that would hurt you more than staying quiet will be ignored by anyone who thinks it through, no matter how loudly it is made.
The checkSeverity is beside the point; the only question is whether you would still prefer to do it once you were standing there.
Try itIn the chain store paradox, write down what the incumbent gets from fighting a single entrant and what it gets from accommodating. If accommodating pays more, the threat to fight was never credible, however many towns it was repeated in.
Games that show it
Know these first
Leads on to
Easily confused with
Sources
- Schelling, T. (1960). Harvard University Press.
- Dixit, A. & Nalebuff, B. (1991). W. W. Norton.