Metacognition as a bridge between social learning and exploration-exploitation

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Following the results of the pilot, a new experiment was conducted. We found that humans engage in observational learning to avoid potential negative reward from choices, and to a lesser extent to benefit from more experienced peers. Although situations of likely negative reward and high observation led to better choices (more choices of the best alternative in a two-armed bandit task), people were less confident in knowing what the best option was. Two follow-up experiments revealed that such dissociation between choices and confidence was mediated by a reward bias, whereby confidence is reduced when reward is lower, and an egocentric bias, whereby making more own choices increases confidence. Preliminary results were presented at the Society for Neuroeconomics in the US.