Trusting the experts: The domain-specificity of prestige-biased social learning

Prestige-biased social learning (henceforth “prestige-bias”) occurs when individuals predominantly choose to learn from a prestigious member of their group, i.e. someone who has gained attention, respect and admiration for success in some domain. Prestige-bias is proposed as an adaptive social-learning strategy it provides short-cut identifying successful group members, without having assess each person’s individually. Previous work documented prestige-bias verified that used adaptively. However, the domain-specificity generality not yet been explicitly addressed experimentally. By domain-specific we mean model only within domain expertise which acquired prestige. domain-general models general, regardless prestige was earned. To distinguish between specific general ran online experiment (n = 397) participants could copy other score points on general-knowledge quiz with varying topics (domains). Prestige our task emergent property participants’ copying behaviour. We found overwhelmingly preferred (same topic) cues (across cues. or cross-domain (different were available, favoured Finally, given choice randomly generated Player IDs, These results suggest sensitive source prestige, they even though these based fewer samples (being calculated one than all topics). extent people employ may depend experience understanding relationships domains.