# Social decision-making driven by artistic explore-exploit tension

## TL;DR

This study explores how rule-based improvisational dance reveals an artistic explore-exploit tension in social decision-making, modeled through evolutionary dynamics and analyzed via bifurcation analysis.

## Contribution

It introduces a model of social decision-making in dance that captures explore-exploit dynamics and shows how rules influence artistic choices.

## Key findings

- Identified key controls of explore-exploit tension.
- Modeled nonlinear feedback dynamics of decision-making.
- Demonstrated how rule adjustments shape dance behavior.

## Abstract

We studied social decision-making in the rule-based improvisational dance $There$ $Might$ $Be$ $Others$, where dancers make in-the-moment compositional choices. Rehearsals provided a natural test-bed with communication restricted to non-verbal cues. We observed a key artistic explore-exploit tension in which the dancers switched between exploitation of existing artistic opportunities and riskier exploration of new ones. We investigated how the rules influenced the dynamics using rehearsals together with a model generalized from evolutionary dynamics. We tuned the rules to heighten the tension and modeled nonlinear fitness and feedback dynamics for mutation rate to capture the observed temporal phasing of the dancers' exploration-versus-exploitation. Using bifurcation analysis, we identified key controls of the tension and showed how they could shape the decision-making dynamics of the model much like turning a "dial" in the instructions to the dancers could shape the dance. The investigation became an integral part of the development of the dance.