Social Learning Strategies

Abstract

This chapter focuses on social learning strategies—functional rules specifying what, when, and who to copy. There are many plausible social learning strategies. Individuals might disproportionately copy when asocial learning would be difficult or costly, when they are uncertain of what to do, when the environment changes, when established behavior proves unproductive, and so forth. Likewise, animals might preferentially copy the dominant individual, the most successful individual, or a close relative. This chapter presents evidence for some of the better-studied learning heuristics and describes statistical procedures for identifying which social learning strategies are being deployed in a data set. It examines “who” strategies, which cover frequency-dependent biases, success biases, and kin and age biases, as well as “what” strategies, random copying, and statistical methods for detecting social learning strategies. Finally, it evaluates meta-strategies, best strategies, and hierarchical control.