Open AccessTrusting and learning from others: immediate and long-term effects of learning from observation and advice
Author(s) -
Uri Hertz,
Vaughan Bell,
Nichola Raihani
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings - royal society. biological sciences/proceedings - royal society. biological sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.342
H-Index - 253
eISSN - 1471-2954
pISSN - 0962-8452
DOI - 10.1098/rspb.2021.1414
Subject(s) - advice (programming) , social learning , term (time) , psychology , fidelity , affect (linguistics) , social psychology , cognitive psychology , computer science , communication , physics , quantum mechanics , programming language , telecommunications , pedagogy
Social learning underpins our species's extraordinary success. Learning through observation has been investigated in several species, but learning from advice—where information is intentionally broadcast—is less understood. We used a pre-registered, online experiment ( n = 1492) combined with computational modelling to examine learning through observation and advice. Participants were more likely to immediately follow advice than to copy an observed choice, but this was dependent upon trust in the adviser: highly paranoid participants were less likely to follow advice in the short term. Reinforcement learning modelling revealed two distinct patterns regarding the long-term effects of social information: some individuals relied fully on social information, whereas others reverted to trial-and-error learning. This variation may affect the prevalence and fidelity of socially transmitted information. Our results highlight the privileged status of advice relative to observation and how the assimilation of intentionally broadcast information is affected by trust in others.