Understanding the Individual Differences and Situational Factors that Guide Human Social Learning

The ability to learn socially is critical to adaptive human culture. I developed three novel behavioural tasks to examine the extent to which individual differences and situational factors guide human social learning. Higher intelligence fostered adaptive social learning, whereas higher openness to experience (a personality dimension) led to maladaptive social learning. Furthermore, older participants were less likely to socially learn than younger participants and greater familiarity with a solution impeded social learning.