Narrative Communication as a Learning Tool in Exploration-Exploitation Dilemmas
Abstract
Storytelling is an important avenue for social learning, proposed to have enabled humans to acquire, preserve, and transmit rich environmental knowledge over generations. Through stories, learners can be taught the causal structure of their environment and guided in decision-making by the knowledge or behavior of others in similar situations. We explored this process of learning and transmission in the context of an exploration-exploitation dilemma. Using a multi-armed bandit and narrative transmission task (N=262), we investigated if adaptive vs. non-adaptive narratives influence decision-making behavior and performance, and whether participants could identify and transmit adaptive narratives to help future participants. We found partial evidence that adaptive narratives facilitate navigating the explore-exploit trade-off. Surprisingly, we found that participants did not identify and transmit adaptive information; instead, they transmitted the narratives they received. We interpret these findings in terms of experimental limitations and cultural evolutionary processes.