Conformity and Indifference: The Structure of Frequency-Dependent Social Learning

We conducted an experiment to describe precisely how social learners use information about the distribution of behaviors in a relevant social group. Players chose between two technologies repeatedly. Payoffs were random, but one technology was better in the sense that its expected payoff was higher. Players were divided into two groups: 1) individual learners who knew their realized payoffs after each choice and 2) social learners who had information about the relative frequencies of the two technologies among the individual learners but no private feedback about their own payoffs. For a subset of the social learners, a theoretical model of conformity matches the data very closely. The remaining social learners, however, made choices without responding to the social information provided. This kind of heterogeneity among social learners has received little theoretical attention with respect to aggregate behavioral dynamics.