Exploring the costs and benefits of social information use: an appraisal of current experimental evidence

Abstract

Research on social learning has focused traditionally on whether animals possess the cognitive ability to learn novel motor patterns from tutors. More recently, social learning has included the use of others as sources of inadvertent social information. This type of social learning seems more taxonomically widespread and its use can more readily be approached as an economic decision. Social sampling information, however, can be tricky to use and calls for a more lucid appraisal of its costs. In this four-part review, we address these costs. Firstly, we address the possibility that only a fraction of group members are actually providing social information at any one time. Secondly, we review experimental research which shows that animals are circumspect about social information use. Thirdly, we consider the cases where social information can lead to incorrect decisions and finally, we review studies investigating the effect of social information quality. We address the possibility that using social information or not is not a binary decision and present results of a study showing that nutmeg mannikins combine both sources of information, a condition that can lead to the establishment of informational cascades. We discuss the importance of empirically investigating the economics of social information use.

Figure 1.

(a,b) Representations of the apparatus: each bird is individually introduced in the observation compartment A where it can observe the video sequences through the transparent partition. (c) Once in compartment A, the focal bird cannot see the content of the feeders in compartment B, and once let into compartment B by remote raising of the partition between compartments A and B, it can choose its feeder using the visual cue on one of the feeders with which it had previous experience or/and the social information that had been provided by a video playback of companions behind one of the feeders (d).

Figure 2.

Proportion of focal birds (n = 10) for which prior training was such that the green dot failed to predict the location of the fast feeder that relied on social information to choose their feeder, expressed according to the number and the behaviour of virtual companions and whether the social information coincided or not with the location of the green dot. (Reproduced with permission from [36].)

Figure 3.

Proportion of focal birds (n = 10) for which prior training was such that the green dot provided a strong predictor of the location of the fast feeder that relied on social information to choose their feeder, expressed according to the number and the behaviour of virtual companions and whether the social information coincided or not with the location of the green dot. (Reproduced with permission from [36].)