Believability of secondhand social versus ecological information in the presence of contradictory firsthand experience

Abstract

Human social learning is mediated not only by motor mimicries but also by declarative/linguistic information transmission. Focusing on declarative social learning, we reasoned that believability of secondhand information differs across the domain of information content (i.e., social domain vs. ecological domain). In particular, we predicted that people assess the veracity of secondhand information in the social domain more cautiously than that in the ecological domain because information in the social domain is often associated with manipulative incentives (e.g., resource competition with rivals). The present study employed a modified version of the Iowa Gambling Task, which was described as a problem of either social or ecological risk management. Also, participants were presented with an advice sheet purportedly provided by another participant. When the task was described as a social risk problem, participants were less likely to follow the advice than when the task was described as an ecological risk problem. This result implies that when participants had some contradictory firsthand information, which they acquired through performing the task themselves, they downplayed the secondhand information, which was presented as a form of advice, in the social domain more than in the ecological domain.