What is it about?
Animals (including humans) use social information from others to help make decisions. An individual’s own pre-existing bias can also influence how they make decisions. We found that birds with weaker bias copied the choices of other birds, using social information to help decide which materials they should use when building their own nest. Whereas, birds with a stronger bias did not copy the choices of other birds and chose nest material based on their own individual bias.
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Photo by The Dark Queen on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our study gives insight on why individuals with access to similar sources of information make different decisions. There is nuance in how the strength of existing bias affects the likelihood of an individual using social information when making important decisions.
Perspectives
“Culture wars” are trending across social media outlets. The same news headline will receive praise from one group and provoke outrage from another. Finding that birds also react very differently to social information depending on their existing bias offers an intriguing parallel to our own online conflict. Investigating how bias and social information influences bird cognition may help us better understand divisive trends of information use in our own society.
Lauren Guillette
University of Alberta
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The roles of social information, asocial information, and initial bias in nest-building decisions., Journal of Comparative Psychology, February 2024, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/com0000374.
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