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      Social learning strategies.

      1
      Learning & behavior
      Springer Science and Business Media LLC

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          Abstract

          In most studies of social learning in animals, no attempt has been made to examine the nature of the strategy adopted by animals when they copy others. Researchers have expended considerable effort in exploring the psychological processes that underlie social learning and amassed extensive data banks recording purported social learning in the field, but the contexts under which animals copy others remain unexplored. Yet, theoretical models used to investigate the adaptive advantages of social learning lead to the conclusion that social learning cannot be indiscriminate and that individuals should adopt strategies that dictate the circumstances under which they copy others and from whom they learn. In this article, I discuss a number of possible strategies that are predicted by theoretical analyses, including copy when uncertain, copy the majority, and copy if better, and consider the empirical evidence in support of each, drawing from both the animal and human social learning literature. Reliance on social learning strategies may be organized hierarchically, their being employed by animals when unlearned and asocially learned strategies prove ineffective but before animals take recourse in innovation.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          Learn Behav
          Learning & behavior
          Springer Science and Business Media LLC
          1543-4494
          1543-4494
          Feb 2004
          : 32
          : 1
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Biology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland. knl1@st-andrews.ac.uk
          Article
          10.3758/bf03196002
          15161136
          8c9c0f27-a7f6-4f86-8288-90ac23aec0e1
          History

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