Focus on the success of others leads to selfish behavior.

ABSTRACT: It has often been argued that the spectacular cognitive capacities of humans are the result of selection for the ability to gather, process, and use information about other people. Recent studies show that humans strongly and consistently differ in what type of social information they are interested in. Although some individuals mainly attend to what the majority is doing (frequency-based learning), others focus on the success that their peers achieve with their behavior (success-based learning). Here, we show that such differences in social learning have important consequences for the outcome of social interactions. We report on a decision-making experiment in which individuals were first classified as frequency- and success-based learners and subsequently grouped according to their learn

SUBMITTER: van den Berg P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4352783 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature