Although humans live in societies that regularly demand engaging with multiple people simultaneously, little is known about social learning in group settings. In two experiments, we combined a Pavlovian learning framework with dyadic economic games to test whether blocking mechanisms support value-based social learning in the gain (altruistic dictators) and loss (greedy robbers) domains. Subjects first learned about an altruistic dictator, who subsequently made altruistic splits collectively with a partner. Results revealed that because the presence of the dictator already predicted the outcome, subjects did not learn to associate value with the partner. This social blocking effect was not observed in the loss domain: A kind robber’s partner, who could steal all the subjects’ money but stole little, acquired highly positive value—which biased subjects’ subsequent behavior. These findings reveal how Pavlovian mechanisms support efficient social learning, while also demonstrating that violations of social expectations can attenuate how readily these mechanisms are recruited.
BeckersT.De HouwerJ.PinenoO.MillerR. R. (2005). Outcome additivity and outcome maximality influence cue competition in human causal learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 238–249. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.31.2.238
2.
BoltonG. E.KatokE.ZwickR. (1998). Dictator game giving: Rules of fairness versus acts of kindness. International Journal of Game Theory, 27, 269–299. doi:10.1007/s001820050072
3.
BottL.HoffmanA. B.MurphyG. L. (2007). Blocking in category learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 685–699. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.136.4.685
4.
BreiterH. C.AharonI.KahnemanD.DaleA.ShizgalP. (2001). Functional imaging of neural responses to expectancy and experience of monetary gains and losses. Neuron, 30, 619–639.
5.
ChakroffA.RussellP. S.PiazzaJ.YoungL. (2017). From impure to harmful: Asymmetric expectations about immoral agents. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 69, 201–209.
6.
CourvilleA. C.DawN. D.TouretzkyD. S. (2006). Bayesian theories of conditioning in a changing world. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 294–300. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.05.004
7.
DayanP.LongT. (1998). Statistical models of conditioning. In JordanM. I.KearnsM. J.SollaS. A. (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems 10 (pp. 117–123). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
8.
DickinsonA.HallG.MackintoshN. J. (1976). Surprise and attenuation of blocking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 2, 313–322. doi:10.1037//0097-7403.2.4.313
9.
DickinsonA.ShanksD.EvendenJ. (1984). Judgment of act-outcome contingency: The role of selective attribution. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology, 36, 29–50.
10.
DreberA.EllingsenT.JohannessonM.RandD. G. (2013). Do people care about social context? Framing effects in dictator games. Experimental Economics, 16, 349–371. doi:10.1007/s10683-012-9341-9
11.
EngelC. (2011). Dictator games: A meta study. Experimental Economics, 14, 583–610. doi:10.1007/s10683-011-9283-7
12.
GlimcherP. W. (2009). Neuroeconomics and the study of valuation. In GazzanigaM. S. (Ed.), The cognitive neurosciences (4th ed., pp. 1085–1092). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
13.
GluckM. A.BowerG. H. (1988). From conditioning to category learning: An adaptive network model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117, 227–247. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.117.3.227
14.
GreenbergJ. (1993). Stealing in the name of justice: Informational and interpersonal moderators of theft reactions to underpayment inequity. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 54, 81–103. doi:10.1006/obhd.1993.1004
15.
GreeneJ. D.PaxtonJ. M. (2009). Patterns of neural activity associated with honest and dishonest moral decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 106, 12506–12511. doi:10.1073/pnas.0900152106
16.
KahnemanD.MillerD. T. (1986). Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives. Psychological Review, 93, 136–153. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.93.2.136
17.
KahnemanD.TverskyA. (1979). Prospect theory: Analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263–291. doi:10.2307/1914185
18.
KahnemanD.TverskyA. (1984). Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39, 341–350.
19.
KaminL. J. (1969). Predictability, surprise, attention, and conditioning. In CampbellB. A.ChurchR. M. (Eds.), Punishment and aversive behavior (pp. 279–296). New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
20.
KashimaY.WoolcockJ.KashimaE. S. (2000). Group impressions as dynamic configurations: The tensor product model of group impression formation and change. Psychological Review, 107, 914–942. doi:10.1037//0033-295X.107.4.914
21.
King-CasasB.TomlinD.AnenC.CamererC. F.QuartzS. R.MontagueP. R. (2005). Getting to know you: Reputation and trust in a two-person economic exchange. Science, 308, 78–83. doi:10.1126/science.1108062
22.
KlucharevV.HytönenK.RijpkemaM.SmidtsA.FernándezG. (2009). Reinforcement learning signal predicts social conformity. Neuron, 61, 140–151. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2008.11.027
23.
Le PelleyM. E. (2004). The role of associative history in models of associative learning: A selective review and a hybrid model. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology B: Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 57, 193–243. doi:10.1080/02724990344000141
24.
LovibondP. F.BeenS. L.MitchellC. J.BoutonM. E.FrohardtR. (2003). Forward and backward blocking of causal judgment is enhanced by additivity of effect magnitude. Memory & Cognition, 31, 133–142.
25.
MackintoshN. J. (1975). A theory of attention: Variations in the associability of stimuli with reinforcement. Psychological Review, 82, 276–298. doi:10.1037/h0076778
26.
MazarN.AmirO.ArielyD. (2008). The dishonesty of honest people: A theory of self-concept maintenance. Journal of Marketing Research, 45, 633–644. doi:10.1509/jmkr.45.6.633
27.
McKelveyR. D.PalfreyT. R. (1992). An experimental study of the centipede game. Econometrica, 60, 803–836. doi:10.2307/2951567
28.
MurtyV. P.FeldmanHallO.HunterL. E.PhelpsE. A.DavachiL. (2016). Episodic memories predict adaptive value-based decision-making. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 548–558. doi:10.1037/xge0000158
29.
O’DohertyJ. P. (2004). Reward representations and reward-related learning in the human brain: Insights from neuroimaging. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 14, 769–776. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2004.10.016
30.
PavlovI. P. (1927). Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex. London, England: Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford.
31.
PearceJ. M.HallG. (1980). A model for Pavlovian learning: Variations in the effectiveness of conditioned but not of unconditioned stimuli. Psychological Review, 87, 532–552. doi:10.1037//0033-295x.87.6.532
32.
Plato. (1950). The republic (A. D. Lindsay, Trans.). New York, NY: Dutton.
33.
RangelA.CamererC.MontagueP. R. (2008). A framework for studying the neurobiology of value-based decision making. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9, 545–556. doi:10.1038/Nrn2357
34.
RescorlaR. A.WagnerA. R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement. In BlackA.ProkasyW. (Eds.), Classical conditioning II: Current research and theory (pp. 64–99). New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
35.
RillingJ. K.King-CasasB.SanfeyA. G. (2008). The neurobiology of social decision-making. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18, 159–165. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2008.06.003
36.
RuffC. C.FehrE. (2014). The neurobiology of rewards and values in social decision making. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15, 549–562. doi:10.1038/nrn3776
37.
SchultzW.DayanP.MontagueP. R. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science, 275, 1593–1599. doi:10.1126/science.275.5306.1593
38.
Seid-FatemiA.ToblerP. N. (2015). Efficient learning mechanisms hold in the social domain and are implemented in the medial prefrontal cortex. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10, 735–743. doi:10.1093/scan/nsu130
39.
SmithE. R.ZarateM. A. (1992). Exemplar-based model of social judgment. Psychological Review, 99, 3–21. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.99.1.3
40.
SuttonR. S.BartoA. G. (1998). Reinforcement learning: An introduction. London, England: Cambridge University Press.
41.
TverskyA.KahnemanD. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453–458.
42.
VurbicD.BoutonM. E. (2014). A contemporary behavioral perspective on extinction. In McSweeneyF. K.MurphyE. S. (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of operant and classical conditioning (pp. 53–76). doi:10.1002/9781118468135
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
