Beloved British novelist Jane Austen is a shrewd observer of social mores and manners, and possesses a penetrating insight into the human psyche. But she is also an adept game theorist, according to a US political scientist.Michael Chwe is an associate professor specializing in game theory at the University of California in Los Angeles. When he sat down with his children eight years ago to watch a 1995 movie based on Austen’s Emma, he realized that the movie was all about manipulation. In his new book titled Jane Austen: Game Theorist, Chwe argues that Austen’s books are not only filled with game-theoretical analysis, the author might as well be the unacknowledged founder of the discipline itself.Game theory is the mathematical analysis of strategic thinking: How people make decisions in anticipation of the actions of others. It’s applied to political science and economics with complicated mathematical analyses of phenomena such as nuclear brinkmanship, the fate of protest movements and stock trading.But there are soft sides to game theory, and sometimes it can be used as a “weapon of the weak”, according to Chwe. Austen’s understanding of human behavior is strikingly game-theoretic, Chwe explains in a YouTube video about his new book. Austen emphasizes choices and defends young women’s right to choose. Even under intense emotional stress, her heroines make good choices. Chwe identifies “strategic manipulations” and “schemes” in Austen’s works.For example, at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, when Jane Bennet is invited to Netherfield, her mother has Jane travel on horseback, knowing it’s going to rain. She anticipates the rain will force her daughter to stay the night, meaning she must spend more time with the eligible bachelor Mr Bingley.Austen also shows us how high-status people are sometimes the easiest to manipulate. As Chwe explains, that’s because powerful people often wrongly assume that others lack the ability to think strategically.Again, in Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine de Bourgh demands that Elizabeth Bennet promise not to marry Mr Darcy. Elizabeth refuses to make this promise, which Lady Catherine conveys to Mr Darcy as an example of her insolence, not realizing that she is helping Elizabeth indirectly signal to Mr Darcy that she is still interested.