Moderate confirmation bias enhances decision-making in groups of reinforcement-learning agents.

ABSTRACT: Humans tend to give more weight to information confirming their beliefs than to information that disconfirms them. Nevertheless, this apparent irrationality has been shown to improve individual decision-making under uncertainty. However, little is known about this bias' impact on decision-making in a social context. Here, we investigate the conditions under which confirmation bias is beneficial or detrimental to decision-making under social influence. To do so, we develop a Collective Asymmetric Reinforcement Learning (CARL) model in which artificial agents observe others' actions and rewards, and update this information asymmetrically. We use agent-based simulations to study how confirmation bias affects collective performance on a two-armed bandit task, and how resource scarcity, group s

SUBMITTER: Bergerot C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11404843 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature