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Decision‐makers use social information to update their preferences but choose for others as they do for themselves
Author(s) -
Michael John,
Gutoreva Alina,
Lee Michele H.,
Tan Peng Ning,
Bruce Eleanor M.,
Székely Marcell,
Ankush Thobhani,
Sakaguchi Hiroaki,
Walasek Lukasz,
Ludvig Elliot A.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of behavioral decision making
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0771
pISSN - 0894-3257
DOI - 10.1002/bdm.2163
Subject(s) - outcome (game theory) , preference , psychology , social psychology , context (archaeology) , microeconomics , economics , paleontology , biology
People's risky decisions are susceptible to the social context in which they take place. Across three experiments using different paradigms, we investigated the influence of three social factors upon participants' decisions: the recipient of the decision‐making outcome (self, other, or joint), the nature of the relationship with the other agent (friend, stranger, or teammate), and the type of information that participants received about others' preferences: none at all, general information about how previous participants had decided, or information about a specific partner's preference. We found that participants' decisions about risk did not differ according to whether the outcome at stake was their own, another agent's, or a joint outcome, nor according to the type of information available. Participants did, however, adjust their preferences for risky options in light of social information.