How Do Teens and Adults Learn About Other People?

Abstract

Imagine that you meet someone new. You may wonder what they like, for example how much do they like baseball? You then get their feedback, which helps you to predict how much they like something similar, like basketball. We tested how teens and adults decide what others like and dislike and how they learn about others through feedback. This learning process can be described with mathematical models that calculate prediction errors—the difference between how much you think someone likes baseball and their actual preference for it. Teens and adults differed in how quickly they learned about others using this measure. Teens also tended to use a different brain region than adults when learning about the preferences of other people. This study helps us to understand how social learning develops over teenage years.