Not All Uncertainty Is Treated Equally: Information Search Under Social and Nonsocial Uncertainty

Abstract

The social world is often portrayed as being less predictable and more uncertain than the nonsocial world. We argue that if cognitive tools such as social projection and norm-based expectation can be used to predict others’ behavior, social uncertainty may nevertheless trigger less search than nonsocial uncertainty. In support of this thesis, we found in two experiments that people engaged in considerably less search in a variant of the ultimatum game than in structurally identical lotteries. Even raising the stakes boosted search only in lotteries but not in the social game. Further differences in actual and anticipated search under social and nonsocial uncertainty indicate that people are aware of norm-based regularities in social worlds and that they exploit those regularities to guide their expectations. The findings highlight that the structure of social environments can afford the application of simple cognitive tools to navigate uncertainty without extensive search.

When uncertainty in social contexts increases exploration and decreases obtained rewards.

“…We investigate one such situation in Experiment 4. Specifically, in addition to attending to the relationships between others, individuals may project their own expected behavior onto others to reason about individuals (i.e., “What would I do in this situation?”; Fleischhut et al, 2021; Tarantola et al, 2017). Evidence suggests that the extent to which individuals engage in this self-projection depends on the individuals or groups about whom they are attempting to reason.…”

“…In other words, the decision maker may employ social knowledge to sidestep the need for behavioral exploration. For instance, in one set of experiments, participants were randomly assigned to sample either the choices of others (social condition) or the outcomes of lotteries (nonsocial condition) in an ultimatum game before playing the game themselves, with the idea that viewing the outcomes could help participants decide their own future choices (Fleischhut et al, 2021). Participants sampled fewer choices of other people versus the lotteries.…”

The Future of Decisions from Experience: Connecting Real-World Decision Problems to Cognitive Processes

“…Interestingly, people take this extra information in a social context into account. When proposers in an ultimatum game can sample from responders' choices to learn about the likelihood of a certain proposal being rejected, these proposers sample much less information than participants in an individual outcome-matched lottery task (Fleischhut et al, 2021). Thus, the DfE paradigm offers an interesting angle to study how voluntary information search interacts with social norms.…”