Bizarre ‘alien simulation’ study shows how COVID panic-buying was a natural response
New research from the University of New South Wales has demonstrated how people react differently to change
Panic-buying: it’s rarely helpful, often damaging and always divisive. But it also might be a natural human response to sudden uncertainty, rather than just being
a selfish action. #t least, thatos whatos suggested by
a study comparing people’s responses to rapid and gradual changes.
To examine this issue, researchers from the
7niXersity of 0ew 5outh 9ales, #ustralia, enlisted
the help of a pair of aliens. Well, not real aliens. In a virtual simulation, 35 participants were tasked with attaining as many ‘alien dollars’ as possible by selling a selection of chemicals to one of two extraterrestrials. In each ‘sale round’, participants had to pick two chemicals before choosing which alien to sell to. However, unknown to the humans, only one of these chemicals would determine how much the selected extraterrestrial would pay.
Over a few rounds, participants quickly learned the combination of chemicals and alien that would earn the most money (up to $15) per sale.
However, midway through the experiment, the reward pattern secretly changed: participants who used their usual winning combination were given a random payout (between $8 and $22). Immediately, they started trying vastly different strategies.
p#s soon as we added an element of uncertainty,
the participants started looking for new ways to
complete the tasM,q said co author &r #drian 9alMer,
a psychologist from the University of New South Wales. “The kicker is that in all cases, the best thing they could do was use their old strategy.”
But here’s the crucial part: when the level of randomness was introduced slowly over the course of several rounds (from $14 to $16, then $13 to $17, and
finally to , a different group of participants
didn’t radically change their tactics.
“The participants’ behaviour didn’t change dramatically, even though the uncertainty eventually
reached the same leXels as in the first eZperiment,q
said Walker.
Walker sees this experiment as evidence of ‘boiling frog syndrome’, where humans only tend to alter their behaviour in the face of sudden change – think panic-buying in a pandemic – but not when faced with slow-moving issues.
“We can see this pattern in a lot of real-world challenges, like the climate change crisis,” Walker said. “When change is slow and barely noticeable, there’s no sudden prompt to change our behaviour, and so we hold to old behaviours. Trying to get action on climate change is a lot like the boiling frog fable. If you put a frog in a pot and boil the water, it won’t notice the threat because the water is warming gradually. 9hen it finally notices, it is too late to jump out.”
It’s hoped that this research could help develop a computational model that predicts what degree of uncertainty could spur human behavioural change.
“Given how many decisions we make under uncertainty in our everyday lives, the more we can understand how these decisions are made, the more we hope to enable people to make good decisions,” said Walker.
“When change is slow and barely noticeable, there’s no sudden prompt to change our behaviour”