Verginer Luca, Vaccario Giacomo, Ronzani Piero
Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Chair of Ecosystem Management, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 2;15(1):22828. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-05534-8.
We explore human herding in a strategic setting where humans interact with automated entities (bots) and study the shift in the behaviour and beliefs of humans when they are aware of interacting with bots. The strategic setting is an online minority game, where 1997 participants are rewarded for following the minority strategy. This setting permits distinguishing between irrational herding and rational self-interest-a fundamental challenge in understanding herding in strategic contexts. Moreover, participants were divided into two groups: one informed of playing against bots (informed condition) and the other unaware (not-informed condition). Our findings revealed that while informed participants adjusted their beliefs about bots' behaviour, their actual decisions remained largely unaffected. In both conditions, 30% of participants followed the majority, contrary to theoretical expectations of no herding. This study underscores the persistence of herding behaviour in human decision-making, even when participants are aware of interacting with automated entities. The insights provide profound implications for understanding human behaviour on digital platforms where interactions with bots are common.
我们在一个战略环境中探讨人类的羊群行为，在这个环境中人类与自动化实体（机器人）进行互动，并研究当人类意识到与机器人互动时其行为和信念的转变。该战略环境是一个在线少数派博弈，1997名参与者因遵循少数派策略而获得奖励。这种环境有助于区分非理性羊群行为和理性自利——这是在战略背景下理解羊群行为的一个基本挑战。此外，参与者被分为两组：一组被告知要与机器人对战（知情组），另一组不知情（不知情组）。我们的研究结果显示，虽然知情参与者调整了他们对机器人行为的信念，但他们的实际决策基本未受影响。在两种情况下，30%的参与者都跟随多数派，这与无羊群行为的理论预期相反。这项研究强调了羊群行为在人类决策中的持续性，即使参与者意识到正在与自动化实体互动。这些见解对于理解在与机器人互动很常见的数字平台上的人类行为具有深远意义。
