Social information use across families, development and socio-economic conditions

Short Description: Social information is crucial for making accurate decisions and learning new skills. Individual variation in social information use is widely observed, but poorly understood. This IS-module examines how social information use varies between individuals, transmits between generations, and is shaped by life events and socio-economic conditions.

Methodological Details: The research team developed a ~5-minute task to reliably measure people’s social information use. The task is called the Berlin Estimate AdjuStment task (BEAST). Across 5 rounds, participants briefly view an image of animals and have to estimate the number of animals before and after observing the estimate of a previous participant. The adjustment between the personal and social estimates provides a direct measure of an individual’s social information use.

Contact

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Replication

Lucas Molleman (University of Amsterdam), Ralf Kurvers (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung), Wouter van den Bos (Universiteit van Amsterdam)

2023

tba

Coming with release in 2026

~4/2026

Sociology

Survey items