The science behind learning from other people's advice
Every day，we need to make decisions about what advice to trust. Should I listen to a friend about what directions to take to the park，or look for road signs to follow？We know that humans' decisions are influenced by their beliefs，which may be based on advice from other people or on information from non-human sources（来源），such as road signs. But which source do we find more reliable（可信赖的），and do our brains process differently when following human or non-human sources？
A new study by my team tried to find out the differences in how people consider information from human advice and from non-human objects. We also checked brain activities while people made these decisions.
In our study，participants（参与者） completed tasks by finding a hidden dot. In one task，people needed to mark the hidden dot on a circle after they received a message from an image of a human face （social advice）. In another task，they did the same work，but the message was provided by an object （non-social advice）. Another important factor in the study was that we could record learning process. People received the information repeatedly from different advisors and objects，and they had to learn over time which of the two sources was more reliable. We also asked participants to report on how reliable they thought the advice was each time they decided.
Looking at how people performed on the task，my team discovered that participants found social advice more reliable than non-social advice. They also changed their beliefs less on the information from human even when the information didn't match with their original ones. This suggests that people may form more stable opinions about the reliability of information from humans. We also found that certain parts of the brain were connected with social information.
These findings could be important for understanding disorders of social cognition，such as psychopathy（精神障碍）. More obviously，our work shows that even a piece of advice from a human can change how people view the information，which is especially important because humans spend increasingly more time in the digital world. Realizing our bias（偏好） on human advice will have great help on designing interactive tools to guide human decision-making as well as ways to develop critical thinking.
