New publication in the journal "Scientific Reports"
7 November 2022, by Celestina Hermida da Costa
Mennella et al., including Dr. Sophie Bavard from the General Psychology lab at the University of Hamburg as one of the authors, published the article "Spontaneous instrumental avoidance learning in social contexts" in the journal "Scientific Reports". The paper investigates how humans adapt to their social environment by learning how to avoid potentially harmful situations, such as encounters with aggressive individuals. When asked to freely choose between two chairs in a waiting room, participants spontaneously — without instruction or monetary reward — developed a preference for the chair that maximized the probability of avoiding angry individuals. In other words, most participants showed clear behavioral signs of instrumental learning, even in the absence of an explicit avoidance strategy. The results of the conducted experiment demonstrate that implicit defensive behaviors in social contexts are likely the product of several learning processes, including instrumental learning.