FriSem

Speaker: Natalia Vélez, Graduate Student with Hyo Gweon, Department of Psychology, Stanford University

Title: Integrating incomplete information with imperfect advice

Abstract: We often turn to other people’s advice to make decisions. However, advice is not perfect: other people’s knowledge might be as limited and incomplete as our own, and their advice might not always be helpful. In this talk, I’ll present a series of studies that explore how people “put two heads together”. Participants played a card game where they combined their own incomplete information about the cards with advice from an advisor. Across three behavioral experiments, participants strategically adjusted their use of the advice, based on the advisor’s access to information, helpfulness, and strategy. Participants’ choices were consistent with a Bayesian Theory of Mind model that uses a generative model of the advisor to infer the advisor’s beliefs about the hidden card, compared to a model that weights advice according to the advisor’s accuracy. I’ll also present preliminary fMRI results that test a unique prediction of the Theory of Mind account.