Differences in how macaques monitor others: Does serotonin play a central role?

an article by Hannah Weinberg‐Wolf and Steve W.C . Chang (Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA) published in WIREs Cognitive Science Volume 10 Issue 4 (July/August 2019)

Abstract

Primates must balance the need to monitor other conspecifics to gain social information while not losing other resource opportunities.

We consolidate evidence across the fields of primatology, psychology, and neuroscience to examine individual, population, and species differences in how primates, particularly macaques, monitor conspecifics.

We particularly consider the role of serotonin in mediating social competency via social attention, aggression, and dominance behaviors

Finally, we consider how the evolution of variation in social tolerance, aggression, and social monitoring might be explained by differences in serotonergic function in macaques.

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The role of social information, market framing, and diffusion of responsibility as determinants of socially responsible behavior

an article by Bernd Irlenbusch and David J.Saxler (University of Cologne, Germany) publsihed in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics Volume 80 (June 2019)

Highlights

• Buyer/seller framing tends to encourage subjects to make purely self-interested decisions.
• Social information about others who behaved socially responsible increases social responsibility.
• When comparing individual decisions with joint decisions, like the ones in buyer/seller interactions, we observe no effect of diffusion of responsibility on social responsibility.

Abstract

A recent debate raises questions on what shapes socially responsible behavior.

In an experiment, we disentangle major determinants, social information, buyer/seller framing and diffusion of responsibility, and provide evidence on how they influence decisions when decision-makers can gain money by harming uninvolved parties.

Our results show that buyer/seller framing tends to encourage subjects to make purely self-interested decisions. In contrast, social information about others who behaved socially responsible increases social responsibility.

When comparing individual decisions with joint decisions, we observe no effect of diffusion of responsibility on socially responsible behavior.

JEL classification: C92, D47

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Strategies for advice taking: the role of epistemic social information

an article by Annika Wallin (Department of Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden)and Richard McElreath (Department of Anthropology, UC Davis, California) published in Economics and Philosophy Volume 31 Issue 1 (March 2015)

Abstract

How does an individual decision maker update his or her beliefs in the light of others’ beliefs?

We present an empirical investigation that varies decision makers’ access to other peoples’ beliefs: whether they know what course of action others have taken (in this case how a problem is solved) and whether they know why this course of action was taken (why a particular solution is preferred).

We propose a number of process models of advice taking that do and do not accommodate the reasons given for belief (epistemic social information), and evaluate which is used through model comparison techniques.

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