What Is Social Learning?

Abstract

This chapter considers ‘social learning’, broadly defined as learning that is facilitated by observation of, or interaction with, another individual (or its products). Of most interest is social learning that results in ‘social transmission’: the observer adopting behaviour patterns matching those of the demonstrator. It looks at a number of different social learning processes, from simple processes like local enhancement to cognitively complex processes like imitation. Social learning is not always adaptive. Individuals need to employ strategies on when, who, and what is beneficial to copy rather than relying on personal information. A variety of experimental set-ups—ranging from simple diffusion to cross-fostering or translocation studies—in combination with statistical methods such as matrix regressions, network-based diffusion analysis or experience-weighted attraction models provide powerful tools to detect and measure the importance of social learning across species and contexts and identify typical pathways of transmission.