Abstract
<p>People often fall into learning traps where a false belief about the structure of the environment leads to under-exploration of rewarding options. Five studies (N = 1342) examined whether observation of decisions made by another learner facilitated escape from a trap or increased trap prevalence. In studies of horizontal social learning (Experiments 1a, 1b, 2), participants first had private experience with a task where approach of different category members could lead to gains or losses. We identified whether participants had learned an optimal two-dimensional categorization rule or fallen into the trap of using a one-dimensional rule. Participants then observed the approach decisions of another learner using the same or a different category rule. A substantial proportion of those who had initially fallen into the trap shifted to the optimal rule after observing use of an alternate rule. This escape from a learning trap was found following observation of both optimal (Experiment 1a) and sub-optimal rules (Experiment 1b, 2). In vertical social learning (Experiments 3, 4), social observation of approach decisions took place before private learning. Such observation led to reduced trap prevalence when the social demonstrator modeled an optimal rule but increased trap prevalence when they modeled a one-dimensional rule. These effects generalized to a learning environment with the same underlying feature structure but different feature-category mappings. These results both offer a novel approach to remediating learning traps as well as highlighting how poorly coordinated social learning can intensify traps.</p>