A reward self-bias leads to more optimal foraging for ourselves than others.

ABSTRACT: People are self-biased for rewards. We place a higher value on rewards if we receive them than if other people do. However, existing work has ignored one of the most powerful theorems from behavioural ecology of how animals seek resources in everyday life, the Marginal Value Theorem (MVT), which accounts for optimal behaviour for maximising resources intake rate. Does this self-bias help humans maximise rewards when foraging for their own benefit compared to foraging for the benefit of others? Participants had to decide when to leave patches where reward intake was gradually depleting, in environments with different average reward rates. Half of the time participants foraged for themselves, and in the other half they collected rewards for an anonymous stranger. The optimal MVT derived solu

SUBMITTER: Contreras-Huerta LS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11538449 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature