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Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust

How do humans learn to trust unfamiliar others? Decisions in the absence of direct knowledge rely on our ability to generalize from past experiences and are often shaped by the degree of similarity between prior experience and novel situations. Here, we leverage a stimulus generalization framework t...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: FeldmanHall, Oriel, Dunsmoor, Joseph E., Tompary, Alexa, Hunter, Lindsay E., Todorov, Alexander, Phelps, Elizabeth A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5816167/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29378964
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1715227115
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author FeldmanHall, Oriel
Dunsmoor, Joseph E.
Tompary, Alexa
Hunter, Lindsay E.
Todorov, Alexander
Phelps, Elizabeth A.
author_facet FeldmanHall, Oriel
Dunsmoor, Joseph E.
Tompary, Alexa
Hunter, Lindsay E.
Todorov, Alexander
Phelps, Elizabeth A.
author_sort FeldmanHall, Oriel
collection PubMed
description How do humans learn to trust unfamiliar others? Decisions in the absence of direct knowledge rely on our ability to generalize from past experiences and are often shaped by the degree of similarity between prior experience and novel situations. Here, we leverage a stimulus generalization framework to examine how perceptual similarity between known individuals and unfamiliar strangers shapes social learning. In a behavioral study, subjects play an iterative trust game with three partners who exhibit highly trustworthy, somewhat trustworthy, or highly untrustworthy behavior. After learning who can be trusted, subjects select new partners for a second game. Unbeknownst to subjects, each potential new partner was parametrically morphed with one of the three original players. Results reveal that subjects prefer to play with strangers who implicitly resemble the original player they previously learned was trustworthy and avoid playing with strangers resembling the untrustworthy player. These decisions to trust or distrust strangers formed a generalization gradient that converged toward baseline as perceptual similarity to the original player diminished. In a second imaging experiment we replicate these behavioral gradients and leverage multivariate pattern similarity analyses to reveal that a tuning profile of activation patterns in the amygdala selectively captures increasing perceptions of untrustworthiness. We additionally observe that within the caudate adaptive choices to trust rely on neural activation patterns similar to those elicited when learning about unrelated, but perceptually familiar, individuals. Together, these findings suggest an associative learning mechanism efficiently deploys moral information encoded from past experiences to guide future choice.
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spelling pubmed-58161672018-02-21 Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust FeldmanHall, Oriel Dunsmoor, Joseph E. Tompary, Alexa Hunter, Lindsay E. Todorov, Alexander Phelps, Elizabeth A. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A PNAS Plus How do humans learn to trust unfamiliar others? Decisions in the absence of direct knowledge rely on our ability to generalize from past experiences and are often shaped by the degree of similarity between prior experience and novel situations. Here, we leverage a stimulus generalization framework to examine how perceptual similarity between known individuals and unfamiliar strangers shapes social learning. In a behavioral study, subjects play an iterative trust game with three partners who exhibit highly trustworthy, somewhat trustworthy, or highly untrustworthy behavior. After learning who can be trusted, subjects select new partners for a second game. Unbeknownst to subjects, each potential new partner was parametrically morphed with one of the three original players. Results reveal that subjects prefer to play with strangers who implicitly resemble the original player they previously learned was trustworthy and avoid playing with strangers resembling the untrustworthy player. These decisions to trust or distrust strangers formed a generalization gradient that converged toward baseline as perceptual similarity to the original player diminished. In a second imaging experiment we replicate these behavioral gradients and leverage multivariate pattern similarity analyses to reveal that a tuning profile of activation patterns in the amygdala selectively captures increasing perceptions of untrustworthiness. We additionally observe that within the caudate adaptive choices to trust rely on neural activation patterns similar to those elicited when learning about unrelated, but perceptually familiar, individuals. Together, these findings suggest an associative learning mechanism efficiently deploys moral information encoded from past experiences to guide future choice. National Academy of Sciences 2018-02-13 2018-01-29 /pmc/articles/PMC5816167/ /pubmed/29378964 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1715227115 Text en Copyright © 2018 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) .
spellingShingle PNAS Plus
FeldmanHall, Oriel
Dunsmoor, Joseph E.
Tompary, Alexa
Hunter, Lindsay E.
Todorov, Alexander
Phelps, Elizabeth A.
Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust
title Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust
title_full Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust
title_fullStr Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust
title_full_unstemmed Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust
title_short Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust
title_sort stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust
topic PNAS Plus
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5816167/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29378964
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1715227115
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