Don't let the pigeon chair the search committee: Pigeons (Columba livia) match humans' (Homo sapiens) suboptimal approach to the secretary problem.

Abstract

The secretary problem is a notorious mathematical puzzle in which one attempts to hire the best available candidate from a pool of known size. Under specific constraints, the problem has an ideal solution, but it is difficult for humans to solve. In particular, humans generally consider too few options from the available pool and in doing so make inferior hires. Three experiments investigated pigeons' and humans' choices on a version of the secretary problem. Pigeons performed suboptimally by choosing too soon, but suffered only limited costs to their rate of earned reinforcement. Depending on the instruction set, human participants approximated either prior suboptimal human results or current pigeons' results. These results may provide some insight into what makes the problem difficult to solve and how the secretary problem connects with decisions in the real world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).