We report on an experiment that distinguishes between rational social learning and behavioral information source bias. Subjects are asked to correctly guess the current binary state of the world. Differently from other social learning studies, subjects must choose between receiving a private, noisy signal about the current state or observing the past guesses of other subjects in the prior period. Our design varies the persistence of the state across time, which affects whether private or social information is optimal. Thus our design enables us to separate subjects who choose information optimally from those who excessively use either social information (“herd animals”) or private information (“lone wolves”). We find sizable proportions of both behavioral types.

我们报告了一项区分理性社会学习和行为信息来源偏见的实验。要求受试者正确猜测世界的当前二进制状态。与其他社会学习研究不同，受试者必须在接收有关当前状态的私人嘈杂信号或观察上一时期其他受试者过去的猜测之间进行选择。我们的设计会随着时间的流逝而改变状态的持久性，这会影响私人信息或社交信息的最佳状态。因此，我们的设计使我们能够将选择最佳信息的主体与过度使用社会信息（“牧群动物”）或私人信息（“独狼”）的主体区分开。我们发现两种行为类型都有相当大的比例。