An Experimental Test of Advice and Social Learning
通过实验比较建议与观察行动在社会学习中的效果，发现人们更愿意遵循前人给出的建议而非模仿其行动，且建议能提高福利。
Social learning describes any situation in which individuals learn by observing the behavior of others. In the real world, however, individuals learn not just by observing the actions of others but also from seeking advice. This paper introduces advice giving into the standard social-learning experiment of Çelen and Kariv (Çelen, B., S. Kariv. 2005. An experimental test of observational learning under imperfect information. Econom. Theory 26(3) 677–699). The experiments are designed so that both pieces of information—action and advice—are equally informative (in fact, identical) in equilibrium. Despite the informational equivalence of advice and actions, we find that subjects in a laboratory social-learning situation appear to be more willing to follow the advice given to them by their predecessor than to copy their action, and that the presence of advice increases subjects' welfare.