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Contributed Talk Session: Thursday, August 14, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, Room C1.04
Poster Session C: Friday, August 15, 2:00 – 5:00 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media

Georgia Turner¹, Lukas J. Gunschera, Shashanka Subrahmanya², Aadesh Salecha³, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Stefano Palminteri⁴, Amy Orben; ¹University of Cambridge, ²University of Southern California, ³Stanford University, ⁴Ecole Normale Supérieure – PSL

Presenter: Georgia Turner

Social media have fundamentally transformed how we live and communicate. However, the methods to study how our cognitive systems interact with technology platforms are very limited. Computational modelling represents a new avenue to uncover the finegrained cognitive processes driving social media behaviour. Here, we develop a novel computational model of real-world social media posting data, adapted from the animal reward learning literature. We fit seven models to a Twitter dataset (n=2,696 users), including a preregistered replication, and show that a hybrid goal-directed and habitual reward-seeking process underlies social media posting behaviour. More frequent posters show signs of more habitual behaviour. Our model paves the way for large-scale investigation into the cross-species cognitive processes motivating social media behaviours, and their downstream impacts on individuals and society.

Topic Area: Reward, Value & Social Decision Making

Extended Abstract: Full Text PDF