Related papers: The evolution of pluralistic ignorance
A general theory of innovation and progress in human society is outlined, based on the combat between two opposite forces (conservatism/inertia and speculative herding "bubble" behavior). We contend that human affairs are characterized by…
Social cognitive theory explains how people learn and acquire knowledge through observing others. Recent years have witnessed the rapid development of large language models (LLMs), which suggests their potential significance as agents in…
We develop a model of social learning from overabundant information: Short-lived agents sequentially choose from a large set of (flexibly correlated) information sources for prediction of an unknown state. Signal realizations are public. We…
We study the evolution of behavioral rules in environments with multiple contexts. Agents copy rules used by better-performing peers in the same context and apply them across contexts. Multiple contexts turn discrete-time imitation dynamics…
Consider the following model to study adversarial effects on opinion forming. A set of initially selected experts form their binary opinion while being influenced by an adversary, who may convince some of them of the falsehood. All other…
Like students facing hard exam questions, large language models sometimes guess when uncertain, producing plausible yet incorrect statements instead of admitting uncertainty. Such "hallucinations" persist even in state-of-the-art systems…
Mutualistic relationships among the different species are ubiquitous in nature. To prevent mutualism from slipping into antagonism, a host often invokes a "carrot and stick" approach towards symbionts with a stabilizing effect on their…
In imitation learning, imitators and demonstrators are policies for picking actions given past interactions with the environment. If we run an imitator, we probably want events to unfold similarly to the way they would have if the…
The phenomenon of emergence of swarm intelligence exists widely in nature and human society. People have been exploring the root cause of emergence of swarm intelligence and trying to establish general theories and models for emergence of…
We study an endogenous opinion (or, belief) dynamics model where we endogenize the social network that models the link (`trust') weights between agents. Our network adjustment mechanism is simple: an agent increases her weight for another…
This paper presents an experimental study to investigate the learning and decision making behavior of individuals in a human society. Social learning is used as the mathematical basis for modelling interaction of individuals that aim to…
Incomplete observability of data generates an identification problem. There is no panacea for missing data. What one can learn about a population parameter depends on the assumptions one finds credible to maintain. The credibility of…
Indirect reciprocity is a key explanation for the exceptional magnitude of cooperation among humans. This literature suggests that a large proportion of human cooperation is driven by social norms and individuals' incentives to maintain a…
Every day, we judge the probability of propositions. When we communicate graded confidence (e.g. "I am 90% sure"), we enable others to gauge how much weight to attach to our judgment. Ideally, people should share their judgments to reach…
Previous work suggests that people's preference for different kinds of information depends on more than just accuracy. This could happen because the messages contained within different pieces of information may either be well-liked or…
Despite strong evidence for peer effects, little is known about how individuals balance intrinsic preferences and social learning in different choice environments. Using a combination of experiments and discrete choice modeling, we show…
Opinion formation is an important element of social dynamics. It has been widely studied in the last years with tools from physics, mathematics and computer science. Here, a continuous model of opinion dynamics for multiple possible choices…
Cognitive biases are widespread in humans and animals alike, and can sometimes be reinforced by social interactions. One prime bias in judgment and decision-making is the human tendency to underestimate large quantities. Previous research…
The indoctrination game is a complete-information contest over public opinion. The players exert costly effort to manifest their private opinions in public in order to control the discussion, so that the governing opinion is similar to…
Reputation is not just a simple opinion that an individual has about another but a social construct that emerges through communication. Despite the huge importance in coordinating human behavior, such a communicative aspect has remained…