scholarly journals Identification of acutely sick people: individual differences and social information use

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1889) ◽  
pp. 20181274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralf H. J. M. Kurvers ◽  
Max Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Sick People ◽  
Social Information Use

scholarly journals Chimpanzees demonstrate individual differences in social information use

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 639-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart K. Watson ◽  
Gillian L. Vale ◽  
Lydia M. Hopper ◽  
Lewis G. Dean ◽  
Rachel L. Kendal ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Social Information Use

scholarly journals Individual differences in learning behaviours in humans: Asocial exploration tendency does not predict reliance on social learning

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wataru Toyokawa ◽  
Yoshimatsu Saito ◽  
Tatsuya Kameda
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Exploration Exploitation

AbstractA number of empirical studies have suggested that individual differences in asocial exploration tendencies in animals may be related to those in social information use. However, because the ‘exploration tendency’ in most previous studies has been measured without considering the exploration-exploitation trade-off, it is yet hard to conclude that the animal asocial ‘exploration-exploitation’ tendency may be tied to social information use. Here, we studied human learning behaviour in both asocial and social multi-armed bandit tasks. By fitting reinforcement learning models including asocial and/or social decision processes, we measured each individual’s (1) asocial exploration tendency and (2) social information use. We found consistent individual differences in the exploration tendency in the asocial tasks. We also found substantive heterogeneity in the adopted learning strategies in the social task: One-third of participants were most likely to have used the copy-when-uncertain strategy, while the remaining two-thirds were most likely to have relied only on asocial learning. However, we found no significant individual association between the exploration frequency in the asocial task and the use of the social learning strategy in the social task. Our results suggest that the social learning strategies may be independent from the asocial search strategies in humans.

scholarly journals Individual consistency and flexibility in human social information use

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1776) ◽  
pp. 20132864 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Toelch ◽  
Matthew J. Bruce ◽  
Lesley Newson ◽  
Peter J. Richerson ◽  
Simon M. Reader
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Individual Consistency

Copying others appears to be a cost-effective way of obtaining adaptive information, particularly when flexibly employed. However, adult humans differ considerably in their propensity to use information from others, even when this ‘social information’ is beneficial, raising the possibility that stable individual differences constrain flexibility in social information use. We used two dissimilar decision-making computer games to investigate whether individuals flexibly adjusted their use of social information to current conditions or whether they valued social information similarly in both games. Participants also completed established personality questionnaires. We found that participants demonstrated considerable flexibility, adjusting social information use to current conditions. In particular, individuals employed a ‘copy-when-uncertain’ social learning strategy, supporting a core, but untested, assumption of influential theoretical models of cultural transmission. Moreover, participants adjusted the amount invested in their decision based on the perceived reliability of personally gathered information combined with the available social information. However, despite this strategic flexibility, participants also exhibited consistent individual differences in their propensities to use and value social information. Moreover, individuals who favoured social information self-reported as more collectivist than others. We discuss the implications of our results for social information use and cultural transmission.

scholarly journals Information use and resource competition: an integrative framework

2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1825) ◽  
pp. 20152550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander E. G. Lee ◽  
James P. Ounsley ◽  
Tim Coulson ◽  
J. Marcus Rowcliffe ◽  
Guy Cowlishaw
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Resource Competition ◽  
Resource Distribution ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Ecological Conditions ◽  
Integrative Framework ◽  
Evolutionary Demography ◽  
Depletion Rate ◽  
Social Information Use

Organisms may reduce uncertainty regarding how best to exploit their environment by collecting information about resource distribution. We develop a model to demonstrate how competition can facilitate or constrain an individual's ability to use information when acquiring resources. As resource distribution underpins both selection on information use and the strength and nature of competition between individuals, we demonstrate interdependencies between the two that should be common in nature. Individuals in our model can search for resources either personally or by using social information. We explore selection on social information use across a comprehensive range of ecological conditions, generalizing the producer–scrounger framework to a wide diversity of taxa and resources. We show that resource ecology—defined by scarcity, depletion rate and monopolizability—determines patterns of individual differences in social information use. These differences suggest coevolutionary processes linking dominance systems and social information use, with implications for the evolutionary demography of populations.

scholarly journals Experience shapes social information use in foraging fish

2018 ◽  
Vol 146 ◽  
pp. 63-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike M. Webster ◽  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Social Information Use

scholarly journals Collective decision making by rational individuals

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (44) ◽  
pp. E10387-E10396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Mann
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Rational Decision Making ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Social Information Use

The patterns and mechanisms of collective decision making in humans and animals have attracted both empirical and theoretical attention. Of particular interest has been the variety of social feedback rules and the extent to which these behavioral rules can be explained and predicted from theories of rational estimation and decision making. However, models that aim to model the full range of social information use have incorporated ad hoc departures from rational decision-making theory to explain the apparent stochasticity and variability of behavior. In this paper I develop a model of social information use and collective decision making by fully rational agents that reveals how a wide range of apparently stochastic social decision rules emerge from fundamental information asymmetries both between individuals and between the decision makers and the observer of those decisions. As well as showing that rational decision making is consistent with empirical observations of collective behavior, this model makes several testable predictions about how individuals make decisions in groups and offers a valuable perspective on how we view sources of variability in animal, and human, behavior.

Decreased environmental variability induces a bias for social information use in humans

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Toelch ◽  
Marjolijn J. van Delft ◽  
Matthew J. Bruce ◽  
Rogier Donders ◽  
Marius T.H. Meeus ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Variability ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Social Information Use

scholarly journals The Effect of Social Information Use without Learning on the Evolution of Social Behavior

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
James M. Borg ◽  
Alastair Channon
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Life ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Evolutionary System ◽  
Behavioral Differences ◽  
Agent Interaction ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Improved Performance ◽  
Foraging Task ◽  
Better Than

In a recent article by Borg and Channon it was shown that social information alone, decoupled from any within-lifetime learning, can result in improved performance on a food-foraging task compared to when social information is unavailable. Here we assess whether access to social information leads to significant behavioral differences both when access to social information leads to improved performance on the task, and when it does not: Do any behaviors resulting from social-information use, such as movement and increased agent interaction, persist even when the ability to discriminate between poisonous and non-poisonous food is no better than when social-information is unavailable? Using a neuroevolutionary artificial life simulation, we show that social-information use can lead to the emergence of behaviors that differ from when social information is unavailable, and that these behaviors act as a promoter of agent interaction. The results presented here suggest that the introduction of social information is sufficient, even when decoupled from within-lifetime learning, for the emergence of pro-social behaviors. We believe this work to be the first use of an artificial evolutionary system to explore the behavioral consequences of social-information use in the absence of within-lifetime learning.

The 3E's Approach to Social Information Use in Birds

2013 ◽  
pp. 272-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira G. Federspiel ◽  
Nicola S. Clayton ◽  
Nathan J. Emery
Keyword(s):  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Social Information Use
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document