The folks at CBS have a hit series on their hands, if last week’s debut of the new “reality” series “The Briefcase” is any indicator. The show brought in an audience of 6.8 million viewers for its May 29 debut, the most-watched show of the night.

I don’t know if there were any social scientists in that initial audience. If so, I suspect their reaction was probably along the lines of “What is the matter with people?”

“The Briefcase” serves as a reminder that there are few things Americans embrace more than exploiting desperate people for our general amusement.

Here’s how the show works. A family facing financial hardship is surprised by a knock on the door and given a briefcase with $101,000. In an instant, their difficulties disappear. But there a catch, of course. They are given the choice between keeping the money or giving part of all of it to another family that is also facing a serious financial hardship. Over the course of the hour, the family torn between self-interest and altruism

Spoiler alert: What that family doesn’t know is the other family has also been given the same amount of money and presented the same choices. So we get to watch not one, but two people struggle with their consciences.

In the end, it is expected that both families will “do the right thing” and both will get a big chunk of money — a win-win situation. The viewing public wins, too. We get to watch these people agonize over what to do with the money We hope that the family will choose to remain in misery for the benefit of the other family because, well, it’s no skin off our noses, as the saying goes. What fun!

I am waiting for the day, however, when one family winds up pocketing the entire $202,000 and says, “so long, suckers!” although I doubt that will happen. It’s reality TV, after all, which means it’s a rigged game from the start.

The premise of the show is based on a game-theory concept called “The Prisoner’s Dilemma.” Here’s how it goes:

Two men commit a crime and are arrested and put in jail. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the other. The prosecutors do not have enough evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. Here is the offer:

— If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves two years in prison

— If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve three years in prison (and vice versa)

— If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve one year in prison (on the lesser charge).

When all of the possible choices are put on a graph, something interesting emerges.

Because betraying a partner offers a greater reward than cooperating with him (no jail), all purely rational self-interested prisoners would betray the other, and so the only possible outcome for two purely rational prisoners is for them to betray each other. The interesting part of this result is that pursuing self-interest logically leads the prisoners to betray each other, when they would get a better reward if they both cooperated and remained silent.

The perverse genius of “The Briefcase” is that it chooses not a pair of criminals, but two families who have fallen onto hard times through no fault of their own. They are sympathetic characters, which means we get to exploit not only their circumstances but their character and sit in judgment of them.

Essentially, this is the Roman Colosseum without the lions.

What could be better than that?

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].