The project’s work was started in Sept 2019. Within less than 6 months, Covid-19 pandemic had completely prevailed and much of active, laboratory based research had come to a halt. In response to this unprecedent situation, we took a number of measures and made some changes to our previous plans, bringing forward the parts of the project that were compatible with the pandemic restrictions.
As part of work package 1, we looked at the theoretical and empirical determinants of social influence in the absence of conflict of interest. Two very important projects were completed in this work package and another project is nearly finished and will be submitted for peer review in the upcoming weeks. In one work we looked at the neurobiological basis of changing of mind in response to social disagreement. In this work, we had the participants’ brain activity measured in fMRI while they performed many trials of private and social decision making. Our paper showed a specific brain area called dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) is differentially activated in these two different forms of conformity. This paper was published in PLoS Biology in early 2022 and can be found here
https://t.co/yWDKKaIqSA(opens in new window). In another project we looked at the role of social influence in learning. In collaboration with our lab partners in Ecole Normale Superior in Paris, we devised a reinforcement learning paradigm for observational learning from watching another individual’s choices and outcomes. In this sense, we show that social learning can be a great benefit because it helps simplify our mental workload. The paper was published in PLoS Biology in 2020 and can be found here
https://bit.ly/3JccQoy(opens in new window). In a third part of the work package 1, we used computational modelling, behavioural experiments, eye tracking and electroencephalography (EEG) to examine the key research question of work package 1. we examined perceptual decisions under uncertainty in social context similar to when basketball referees deliberate an incident. We introduced a biophysically plausible neural ‘attractor’ population model for joint perceptual decision making whose predictions were supported by our behavioral and neurobiological data. The paper describing these findings is currently under review.
As promised in Work package 2, we applied Game Theory to understanding the role of strategic overconfidence in social interactions that involve conflict of interest. This work was a multi-centric collaboration with Ralf Kurvers (Max Planck Center for Adaptive Rationality, Berlin), Uri Hertz (Haifa University, Israel) and Ken Binmore (from UCL, London). Having established the game theoretic basis of overconfidence in social interaction, we then proceeded to examine the predictions of this theory in more than 10 experiments and replications. Some of the experiments were conducted online and others were conducted in our labs and more 800 participants were recruited. The result was a paper published in iScience in 2021. A short summary of the paper can be found here
https://bit.ly/370KOiy(opens in new window). In this period we also managed to deliver another key objective of work package 2 by publishing a paper in which we examined the manifestation of strategic overconfidence in mental health and mental illness.
In work package 3, we looked at the role of face-to-face discussions in groups and how, aggregation of opinions in a hierarchical structure could enhance the wisdom of crowds and avoid overconfidence. . We asked if discussion could help predict the future in an efficient, cheap, and inclusive way? We showed that small groups (i.e. no more than 4-5 individuals) of lay individuals, when organized, come up with better predictions than those they provide alone.This work has now been published in Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied.
