Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

People often learn about risks from other people. In the current study, we investigated the impact of social learning on risky decisions from experience by incorporating direct observational learning. Participants were placed in pairs – one participant observed the other participant sampling from different options, and then both made decisions based on this personal/observed experience. Participants tended to underweight rare outcomes less when learning from observed experience, particularly with high-value rare outcomes. This difference was not reliably significant, however, suggesting a subtle effect. The study discusses potential contributing factors such as active hypothesis testing, psychological distance, social environment, competitiveness, and goal alignment to explain the results. Overall, the findings contribute to understanding the dynamics of social learning in risky decision-making.