Should you listen to the wisdom of the pack?
Do you listen to others or go with your gut most of the time? Two ecologists, Jorgen Johnsson and Fredrik Sundstrom of Goteborg University in Sweden, say that sometimes, even though it may seem you have a handle on things, it’s better to go along with the crowd.
The two scientists set up an experiment in which European minnows were allowed to learn the correct route through a maze to find food—in the presence or absence of a predatory brown trout. Then a naïve fish was introduced to the group and trials were run with and without the predator. Initially, the study found that naïve fish without the predator were only half as successful in finding the food when their group mates had been pretrained with the predator. The scientists say the naïve fish would have been better off in this case in not trusting group mates, who were operating on outdated information when it came to predatory risk.
Johnsson and Sundstrom also found, however, that whether or not a predator had been introduced to the group, the foraging success of the naïve fish improved as the skills of their group mates increased through the passing of social information. The scientists say that even though using social information to make decisions is an imperfect art, that rapidly changing environments are hard for individuals to keep up with, and that’s why listening to your peers may be better for you than relying purely on your own instincts.
Similar Posts:
- Do Yourself A Favor
- Do Yourself A Favor
- New Hoopla Pro Members Area
- Multi-Tab Browser
- Multi-Tab Browser
