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STRATEGIES FOR ADVICE TAKING: THE ROLE OF EPISTEMIC SOCIAL INFORMATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2015

Annika Wallin  and
Richard McElreath
Annika Wallin
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive Science, Lund University, Box 192, 22100 Lund. Email: annika.wallin@lucs.lu.se. URL: http://www.fil.lu.se/person/AnnikaWallin
Richard McElreath
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, UC Davis, One Shields Avenue Davis, California 95616, USA. Email: mcelreath@ucdavis.edu. URL: http://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/people/mcelreat
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Abstract:

How does an individual decision maker update his or her beliefs in the light of others’ beliefs? We present an empirical investigation that varies decision makers’ access to other peoples’ beliefs: whether they know what course of action others have taken (in this case how a problem is solved) and whether they know why this course of action was taken (why a particular solution is preferred). We propose a number of process models of advice taking that do and do not accommodate the reasons given for belief (epistemic social information), and evaluate which is used through model comparison techniques.

Keywords

Adviceconformityepistemic informationimitationsocial information

Information

Type
Symposium on Individual and Social Deliberation
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 67 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 

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