Human foraging behavior; Decision-making

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Wilke
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2006 to 2008
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 26887395

I propose to study the proximate mechanisms that people use to decide when to give up on one task and switch to another. Specifically, I test whether the heuristic rules that evolved to guide animals in deciding when to leave a patch of food also underlie human decision making when foraging for physical objects or information (e.g. in memory). For this purpose, I study people in controlled laboratory settings as well as plan to conduct field studies with traditional foraging societies. Recognizing the social aspect of animals and humans environments - that environments are generated by other individuals - I propose to design an additional experiment in which groups of foragers have to compete for resources in the environment.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. Clark Barrett