Cultural influence of social information use in pedestrian road-crossing behaviours.

ABSTRACT: Social information use is common in a wide range of group-living animals, notably in humans. The role it plays in decision-making could be a key to understanding how social groups make collective decisions. The observation of road-crossing behaviours in the presence of other individuals is an ideal means to study the influence of social information on decision-making. This study investigated the influence of culture on social information used by pedestrians in a potentially dangerous scenario, namely road crossing. We scored the collective crossing of pedestrians at four locations in Nagoya (Japan) and three locations in Strasbourg (France). French pedestrians cross against the lights much more often (41.9%) than Japanese ones (2.1%). Individuals deciding to cross the road were strongly in

SUBMITTER: Pele M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5367276 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature