Adaptive Social Learning using Theory of Mind
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Social learning is a powerful mechanism through which agents learn about the world from others. However, humans don’t always choose to observe others, since social learning can carry time and cognitive resource costs. How do people balance social and non-social learning? In this paper, we propose a rational mentalizing model of the decision to engage in social learning. This model estimates the utility of social learning by reasoning about the other agent’s goal and the informativity of their future actions. It then weighs the utility of social learn- ing against the utility of self-exploration (non-social learning). Using a multi-player treasure hunt game, we show that our model can quantitatively capture human trade-offs between social and non-social learning. Furthermore, our results indicate that these two components allow agents to flexibly apply social learning to achieve their goals more efficiently.
Institutions: Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4408258739