Squid Game for Management Professionals — Part VII

Lessons to learn from the fifth game about Human Instincts

In the seventh article of the series, we will analyze the fifth game of the competition — Glass Stepping Stones.

Stepping Stones is a game, where kids go from one place to another while hopping all the way from one stone to another.

Glass Stepping Stones

Before introducing players to the game, they are brought to a room and are asked to choose one from the sixteen vests, numbered 1 through 16. The significance of the numbers is not shared with the players but it does seem to be related to some kind of sequence or order.

When players start choosing their vests, they tend to go for middle numbers first, to which the VIPs (those observing the players on TV screens) are shown mentioning how it is an animal instinct to go for the middle numbers as when faced with danger, animals tend to seek refuge in the herd.

Once the middle eight vests get taken, a hint is shared with the players, telling them that the numbers on the vest show the order in which the players will be playing the game. Following another instinct, players rush to pick up the vests with higher numbers, hoping that the order must be ascending. However, players tend to leave the vests numbered 1 and 16 for the last, showing how going on either extremes is unsafe as they will be standing either at the first or the last position, which can be a disadvantage if they do not get to witness whatever happens.

When the players are brought to the arena, they are standing at one end of a bridge, which basically has two lanes of glass tiles: at each step, one of the two adjacent tiles is made of tampered glass and the other of the normal glass. The tampered glass tile can bear the weight of 2 persons at a time, but the normal cannot bear even a single person’s weight. There are 18 pairs of tiles in total, and in order to survive, the players have to reach the other end of the bridge. The bridge is constructed at an enormous height and a fall from there is death for sure.

Courtesy: Netflix — Squid Game

The numbers on the vest, as now disclosed to the players, is the order in which the players will go on the bridge. No player can cross the player before them, so it is essential to maintain the order.

The time limit for this game is 16 minutes. All those who do not reach the other side of the bridge in 16 minutes will die.

Some corollaries:

1. The first person can survive only if they can somehow identify which tile is made of tampered glass or out of pure luck.
2. There are 18 pairs of tiles and 16 players in total — if every player makes their first guess wrong, none of them survives. Only 2 right guesses will ensure that the last one lives.
3. At every guess, the possibility of your survival is 50% — this means that you either survive, or you help the remaining players with one lesser guess to worry about.
4. On average, one player cannot take more than a minute to decide.
5. The foremost player has the power to ensure that everyone dies if they choose not to move at all and 16 minutes pass.

In this game, player’s individual success does not ensure anyone else’s failure. In fact, their failure increases the chances of others’ survival. We see that eventually 3 out of 16 survive the game, making the success rate 18.75%.

Human Instincts

We will now study each player’s instincts as they make the guess.

The first one takes a random hop and makes the first guess right but falls on the next one. 2 discovered, 16 guesses remaining.

The second one tries to understand the pattern — the first one was on the left, the second one on the right, so she expects the third tampered glass tile to be on the left and hops, and falls. So the predictability of the pattern fails here. 3 discovered, 15 guesses remaining.

The third one calculates the probability of him surviving till the other end of the bridge to be 1 in 32,768. Understanding that the probability of his survival is this low, he starts hopping from one to another really fast and recklessly. He falls on the fourth guess. 6 discovered, 12 remaining.

The fourth one follows the guesses of the third one but forgets 2 steps before the one where the third one fell. He asks the one behind him, the fifth one, for help. He is misguided and makes the wrong choice and falls. No new discovery is made by this one, just the one of the third one’s guesses gets reinforced.

The fifth one falls from the step next to the one made by the third one. 7 discovered, 11 remaining.

Courtesy: Netflix — Squid Game

The sixth one makes the first guess right, but then gets scared apparently, sits down and starts praying. This further scares the seventh one because of the time being wasted, endangering everyone else. Being pressurized by the ones behind them, the seventh one jumps forward to push the sixth one down, and their tussle results in the seventh one falling instead, and his fall breaking the next glass tile, resulting in a new discovery. He jumps forward and while he is taking his time to thank God, the eighth one comes forward and pushes him down, breaking the another tile. He then jumps forward, and then jumps further and survives his first guess. He thinks he can see the difference of the color in tiles and hops forward, but falls. 12 discovered, 6 remaining.

The ninth one, when has to make the first guess, turns around and asks others to cross him if they want to go any further. The tenth one is afraid to comply, so the eleventh one jumps further and pushes the tenth one forward, who falls from the next tile. The eleventh, who is motivated by revenge against the ninth one, jumps forward, taking the ninth one with him in the fall and breaking the next tile on the way. 13 discovered. 5 remaining.

The twelfth one falls on first guess. 14 discovered, 4 remaining.

The thirteenth one has a significant experience in glass manufacturing. Coming to the front with only four steps remaining, he decides to now use his skill to identify the next tiles before jumping forward. He identifies the tampered glass tile with the help of reflection of light and makes a successful jump consequently. When asked why he did not let everyone know about this before and help them play safer, he replies that everyone there had tried to kill everyone else when given the chance and so they were not worth helping. He makes another successful move, and then another. 17 discovered, 1 remaining.

The watchers, the VIPs, realize that he can see the difference in tiles so the light is taken out, hindering him to do it any further. He then decides to try and use sound to identify the tampered glass but fails. With time running out, the fourteenth jumps ahead and pushes him forward, and the thirteens falls down breaking the next glass. All discovered, none remaining.

The fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth make it to the other end successfully. The time runs out and all the remaining glass tiles are blasted.

Key Learnings

In situations where humans sense danger and threat to life, their animal instincts kick in that makes them take actions despite low probabilities of success. But what is different in humans from animals is that their minds even in the times of desperation and danger have the ability to be manipulative, not only for their survival.

Learning about human instincts can benefit those in management positions a lot — it enables people to make informed decisions, keeping in mind how the other person can possibly feel or respond and preparing for dealing with the possibilities in advance.

Let’s focus on the ten human instincts that we can learn from the behaviors of the players during this game.

1. Avoiding extremes — when faced with danger, humans, like animals, tend to seek refuge in the herd. They try to stay as far from being outliers as possible. This can a lot of times prevent people from reaching excellence as well.
2. Seeking patterns — in situations where exists a lack of knowledge, our minds try to work out patterns to connect the dots. This tendency of human mind has been widely studied by scholars of cognitive school of learning.
3. Recklessness — when there is no apparent way of avoiding danger, reckless behavior, such as flight or fight responses, is witnessed in animals as well as humans.
4. Losing memory — complex situations and encounters with dangers deprive humans with the ability to focus and therefore result in loss of memory.
5. Seeking divine help — desperate conditions do push those believing in the existence of divine powers or entities to plead and request of the divine blessing.
6. Committing acts of sin — In the events of danger and hardships, the tendency of human beings to give in to the evil in them and committing sins as serious and despicable as murder may increase significantly.
7. Mirage — an optical illusion might occur when one really wants to find something which may not even exist.
8. Hands up — When making a decision is hard and the probability of unfavorable outcome is extremely high, the regressive behaviors start kicking in and humans may accept not making any decision at all and hand over the responsibility of making decisions to others.
9. Sacrifice for Revenge — Sometimes, vengeance takes such a priority that one is fine with sacrificing themselves just to make sure that the other one does not get away without suffering.
10. Selfishness — In a dog-eat-dog world, people may want to save themselves only, not caring about what happens to others. This includes letting others suffer while knowing a way out but keeping it to oneself.

Check out the other published parts of the series:

1. How can we increase the probability of success in cases of headhunting?
2. How to steer clear of ambiguity in building professional relationships with the help of contracts?
3. How to stay sensible while making decisions during the times of stress?
4. How to manage the lack of privilege with innovative thinking?
5. How to lead the battle against the challenges that seem enormous and unwinnable?
6. How to manage conflicts and win in win-lose situations?
7. What to expect from humans when they are at their worst?

Feel free to share your comments on the analysis, and do share it in your social and professional circles if you think this can benefit them!