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

Abstract

Similar decision-making situations often arise repeatedly, presenting tradeoffs between (i) acquiring new information to facilitate future-related decisions (exploration) and (ii) using existing information to secure expected outcomes (exploitation). Exploration choices have been well characterized in nonsocial contexts, however, choices to explore (or not) in social environments are less well understood. Social environments are of particular interest because a key factor that increases exploration in nonsocial contexts is environmental uncertainty, and the social world is generally appreciated to be highly uncertain. Although uncertainty sometimes must be reduced behaviorally (e.g., by trying something and seeing what happens), other times it may be reduced cognitively (e.g., by imagining possible outcomes). Across four experiments, participants searched for rewards in a series of grids that were either described as comprising real people distributing previously earned points (social context) or as the result of a computer algorithm or natural phenomenon (nonsocial context). In Experiments 1 and 2, participants explored more, and earned fewer rewards, in the social versus nonsocial context, suggesting that social uncertainty prompted behavioral exploration at the cost of task-relevant goals. In Experiments 3 and 4, we provided additional information about the people in the search space that could support social-cognitive approaches to uncertainty reduction, including relationships of the social agents distributing points (Experiment 3) and information relevant to social group membership (Experiment 4); exploration decreased in both instances. Taken together, these experiments highlight the approaches to, and tradeoffs of, uncertainty reduction in social contexts. Public Significance StatementWhen interacting with other people, we often face a high degree of uncertainty: we may not know how other people are feeling, their past experiences, or their future behaviors. We show that people resolve this uncertainty through behavioral exploration-that is, they seek out interactions with other people in order to learn about them. However, this exploration can come at the cost of other goals (in this case, earning rewards). People can sidestep the need for this costly exploration by employing other tools, such as their expectations about how people are similar to each other or themselves. Together, we demonstrate approaches that individuals use to guide social knowledge acquisition.

Trait Reward Sensitivity Modulates Connectivity with the Temporoparietal Junction and Anterior Insula during Strategic Decision Making

“…Additionally, while we assessed strategic behavior, we did not assess it in a dynamic context. As social contexts increase exploration and obtained rewards (Plate et al, 2023), a fruitful future direction could investigate how brain responses to changes over time reflect social decisions.…”

Testing Theory of Mind in GPT Models and Humans

“…This cautionary epistemic stance introduces a fundamental difference in the way that humans and GPT models react to social uncertainty 24 . Humans generally nd uncertainty in social environments to be aversive and will incur additional performance costs in order to reduce it 25 . Theory of Mind often plays a central role in reducing uncertainty, as the ability to reason about mental states-in combination with information about context, past experience, and knowledge of social norms-allows people to reduce uncertainty and commit to likely hypotheses, allowing for successful navigation of the social environment as active agents 26,27 .…”