文章基本信息

标题：Information about peer choices shapes human risky decision-making
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作者：Livia Tomova ; Luiz Pessoa
期刊名称：Scientific Reports
电子版ISSN：2045-2322
出版年度：2018
卷号：8
期号：1
页码：5129
DOI：10.1038/s41598-018-23455-7
语种：English
出版社：Springer Nature
摘要：Humans frequently make choices that involve risk for health and well-being. At the same time, information about others' choices is omnipresent due to new forms of social media and information technology. However, while past research has shown that peers can exert a strong influence on such risky choices, understanding how information about risky decisions of others affects one's own risky decisions is still lacking. We therefore developed a behavioral task to measure how information about peer choices affects risky decision-making and call it the social Balloon Analogue Risk Task (sBART). We tested this novel paradigm in a sample of 52 college young adults. Here we show that risky decisions were influenced in the direction of the perceived choices of others - riskier choices of others led to riskier behavior whereas safer choices of others led to less risky behavior. These findings indicate that information about peer choices is sufficient to shape one's own risky behavior.