Performance in a social learning task - designing virtual arrowheads - across four cultural groups: White British participants from the United Kingdom (group 'UK'), Chinese immigrants in the UK (group 'CI'), participants from the Chinese mainland (group 'CM') and participants from Hong Kong (group 'HK').The aim of this project is to compare the learning styles of Western (British) and East Asian (Chinese) participants. In particular, this project will test whether there is a cross-cultural difference in the tendency to copy others’ solutions to a problem ("social learning") versus solving a problem on one’s own ("individual learning";). Previous experimental studies conducted by the lead UK researcher (Dr Mesoudi) have found that UK participants tend to copy other peoples’ solutions to tasks less often than they should do, if they were maximising their monetary payoff. The lead Hong Kong researcher (Prof Chang) has previously argued that Western people may be particularly predisposed to individual learning, and Asian people may rely more on social learning, due to the greater socio-political and environmental change historically in Western Europe compared to Asia. This project will directly compare Western and Asian learning styles to see whether the excessive individual learning found previously in the UK is a consequence of this cultural variation. Participants will engage in a simple computer-based task in which they design an artifact (an arrowhead) either through trial and error (individual learning) or by copying another participants’ artifact (social learning).

Behavioural lab experiments. See details in: Mesoudi, A., Chang, L., Murray, K. & Lu, H.J. (2015) Higher frequency of social learning in China than in the West shows cultural variation in the dynamics of cultural evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 282, 20142209.