Adolescents seek social information under uncertainty

Adolescence is a period of emerging independence, in which adolescents face difficult decisions, including those that involve risk for health and well-being. Previous research suggests that learning from others might be a prominent strategy of adolescents to inform these difficult decisions. However, there is a gap in the literature that addresses the active role adolescents may have in gaining information about others' behavior (i.e., social information search). Here, we investigated when and how much social information adolescents search before making decisions under risk and ambiguity, using a novel social search paradigm. In this paradigm, adolescents were able to reveal real information about their classmates' choices before deciding on their final choice. Our two experiments suggest that social information search can be broken down in two independent decisions: first the decision to initiate search, followed by the decision to continue search. Several factors motivated initiation of search, including: (a) the difficulty of the choice, (b) uncertainty about the outcome, and (c) the magnitude of the reward at stake. Search took generally longer when adolescents faced information not in line with their initial preference. Finally, we observed that adolescents used the sampled social information to inform their risky-choice behavior. Taken together, these results provide novel insights into the dynamics of peer influence in adolescence and stress the importance of treating adolescents not only as receivers, but as active agents searching for social information.