Rational Choice, Context Dependence, and the Value of Information in European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)
Rational Choice, Context Dependence, and the Value of Information in European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)
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DOI：
10.1126/science.1209626
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发表时间：
2011-11-18
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
Kacelnik, Alex
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Freidin, Esteban;Kacelnik, Alex
人类和非人类的决策者都可以通过做出依赖于上下文的选择来偏离最优选择。因为忽略上下文信息可能是有益的，所以这被称为“少即是多”效应。“因此，生物体对环境如此敏感的事实是自相矛盾的，需要纳入生态学的观点。在一项对椋鸟的实验中，添加识别背景的线索会削弱同时选择猎物的表现，但会改善连续遭遇猎物的表现，在这种情况下，受试者可以拒绝机会，以便在背景中搜索。由于连续的猎物遇到的可能是更频繁的性质，存储和使用上下文信息似乎是生态理性的平衡条件接受每个机会的相对丰富的背景，即使这会导致上下文相关的次优偏好（不太频繁）同时选择。在生态相关的场景中，更多的信息似乎更多。
Both human and nonhuman decision-makers can deviate from optimal choice by making context-dependent choices. Because ignoring context information can be beneficial, this is called a "less-is-more effect." The fact that organisms are so sensitive to the context is thus paradoxical and calls for the inclusion of an ecological perspective. In an experiment with starlings, adding cues that identified the context impaired performance in simultaneous prey choices but improved it in sequential prey encounters, in which subjects could reject opportunities in order to search instead in the background. Because sequential prey encounters are likely to be more frequent in nature, storing and using contextual information appears to be ecologically rational on balance by conditioning acceptance of each opportunity to the relative richness of the background, even if this causes context-dependent suboptimal preferences in (less-frequent) simultaneous choices. In ecologically relevant scenarios, more information seems to be more.