Exploration-exploitation across domains

This research idea resulted in a small research program investigating different theoretical explanations and resulting mechanisms that could be able to describe the human behavior to explore more in the domain of losses than gains. The Win-Stay-Lose-Shift heuristic, the Bayesian shrinkage hypotheses, Prospect Theory as well as different Reinforcement Learning models have been discussed without agreement and converging evidence for any one theory. These different proposals and their ability to predict human behavior were investigated in different (sub-)projects, presented at SJDM 2021/22, RLDM ‘22 as well as Math Psych ‘22, respectively.

Social Learning

Too hot and WIP. But this won the Best Poster Award at the Summer Institute at the Max-Planck Institute 2022 in Berlin.

Memory contagion

The transmission of information, particularly false information, in social networks is a pressing issue. However, the underlying contagion mechanisms are not well understood. Some propose that the number of exposures drives transmission (simple contagion), whereas others emphasize the number of unique sources (complex contagion). In this study we investigated whether true and false memories were transmitted either through simple or complex contagion. Participants (N = 67) were asked to recall previously studied Deese-Roediger-McDermott word lists in two collaborative recalls, either with two different partners (once each) or the same partner twice, followed by an individual recall. Results were presented at the Psychonomics 2020 conference.

Please reach out if you would like to have a closer look at any of the studies.