{"pk":21466,"title":"A Rational Model of Vigilance in Motivated Communication","subtitle":null,"abstract":"We are able to learn from others through a combination of trust and vigilance: we trust and believe people who are reliable and have our interests at heart; we ignore those who are incompetent or self-interested. While past work has studied how others' competence influences social learning, relatively little attention has been paid to how others' motivations influence such processes. To address this gap, we develop a Bayesian model of vigilance that considers the speaker's instrumental self-interest, and test predictions of this model through an experiment. In accordance with our model, participants become more vigilant when informants stand to benefit from influencing their actions. When perceived self-interest is maximal, testimony can be discounted wholesale, rendering middle ground increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to find. Our results have implications for research on polarization, misinformation, and disagreement.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Linguistics; Psychology; Learning; Social cognition; Bayesian modeling"}],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3kv0c8b7","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Kerem","middle_name":"","last_name":"Oktar","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""},{"first_name":"Ted","middle_name":"","last_name":"Sumers","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""},{"first_name":"Tom","middle_name":"","last_name":"Griffiths","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2024-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/21466/galley/11065/download/"},{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/21466/galley/21911/download/"}]}