Social Learning in a Social Hierarchy: An Experimental Study

Social learning occurs in the context of a structure of social interaction among agents. Models of the social structure typically do not include hierarchical elements, such as status differences among agents. In this paper we report the results of experiments designed to examine learning in the presence of a commonly-observed, higher-status agent. We test strategy choice by subjects in a 3x3 coordination game with two equilibria. We find that the commonlyobserved agent can influence the choice between two equilibria, one of which has a higher payoff but is risky, and the other of which has a lower payoff but lower risk. However, there are limits to this agent's influence. A commonly-observed agent cannot move subjects away from an equilibrium that dominates the other on all dimensions, and he cannot induce subjects to choose a strategy that does not lead to an equilibrium. We explore the implications of this research for understanding the influence of high-status members of society. *We thank Shabnam Modarres-Mousavi for research assistance, Cathleen A. Johnson for invaluable assistance in recruiting subjects and conducting the experiments at Virginia Tech, and Nancy Martorano for conducting experiments at Rice University. We also thank Megan Wilson for tracking down questions for the "trivia quiz" used in the experiment. The experiments at Virginia Tech were conducted at the Laboratory for the Study of Human Thought and Action. The paper benefited from comments of participants in the Workshop on Social Interaction, Santa Fe Institute, October, 1999. This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.