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Rational inferences about social valuation.

Tadeg Quillien1, John Tooby2, Leda Cosmides1

  • 1Center for Evolutionary Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States of America; Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States of America.

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

People accurately gauge how much others value their welfare by observing their sacrifices. Lower perceived value, even with equal personal gain, triggers anger, supporting theories of social valuation.

Keywords:
Computational modelingEmotionEvolutionary psychologySocial cognitionWelfare trade-offs

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Area of Science:

  • Social Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Individuals' decisions reveal the value they place on others' welfare, influencing social responses like partner choice and anger.
  • Research suggests people can extract and utilize information about others' valuations, even from noisy or limited data.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To test the hypothesis that humans possess cognitive mechanisms for estimating the weight others assign to their welfare.
  • To investigate whether people efficiently update their representations of others' valuations, particularly in social decision-making contexts.

Main Methods:

  • Two studies (N=200, US samples) involved participants observing a partner make trade-offs.
  • Participants predicted the partner's future decisions, with their estimates compared to a Bayesian ideal observer model.
  • Anger responses were measured in relation to observed welfare trade-offs, controlling for total payoffs.

Main Results:

  • Participant estimates of others' valuations, based on sparse evidence, aligned with the predictions of an ideal observer model.
  • Lower perceived welfare trade-offs by others elicited greater anger from participants, irrespective of their own constant payoffs.
  • Findings support the efficient updating of social valuation representations and provide direct evidence for anger's trigger.

Conclusions:

  • People effectively estimate how much others value their welfare, demonstrating sophisticated social inference capabilities.
  • Anger appears to be a response to perceived low valuation by others, rather than solely to incurred costs, supporting the recalibrational theory of anger.