Oops, My Bad
Why We're So Good at Learning from Others, Especially from Their Mistakes....
A small group of my friends and I occasionally go to a local bar for their trivia night. We work out answers as a group. Someone will say, “Bill? It’s Bill….” “Withers!” comes a reply. But at least once or twice each time, only one of us is sure they have the answer. Since the rest of us have no idea, we immediately defer to them. That person is almost always right, and we point proudly at our teammate and clap to recognize their brilliance.
But then, without fail, there are also a couple of times each night, when one or two of us has the right answer, but we don’t listen to them—even though no one else thinks they have a correct response. Then they were right, we blew it, and we keep apologizing to them for the rest of the evening. (And this has nothing to do with any one person. We all take turns being the listened-to and the overlooked sages.)
What is it that makes us listen to a correct answer in one moment and then ignore the next one?
When do we learn from one another? When and why don’t we, and when should we?
Learning Is Surprisingly Social
“Social learning”—learning from at least one other person—is one of the main ways that humans have made so much progress. And while independent learning is absolutely possible, something that an introvert like me shudders to hear is that a number of researchers argue that social learning is qualitatively superior.
What is undisputed is that social learning is efficient: We can adopt others’ practices, not knowing why but because we rely on their expertise. We learn from role models. And social learning allows us to do more than sheer imitation of others’ actions. We can learn just by paying attention to what others focus on. We may also rethink our approach when we see how others react, while their responses trigger emotions in us. And we combine and apply others’ knowledge in new ways.
So, driven by efficiency, we accept the wisdom of crowds over figuring out the validity of each individual’s contribution. Even toddlers will follow two people’s lead faster than they’ll emulate the same person giving an example twice.
Although there’s a common misunderstanding of how the wisdom of crowds really works. It’s not that we should just trust the majority—assume that most people know the right answer (like the old Who Wants to be a Millionaire “Ask the Audience” lifeline). The idea is actually that a large group of people should have a diverse group of opinions. The bigger the (Trivia) team, the more likely it is that someone will know the correct answer.
Similarly, aggregating and averaging the range of everyone’s answers will result in a better, more accurate answer than picking one person’s response.
We also can’t forget that, for good or for bad, we evaluate the information based on our inferences of who someone is and what motivates them. We use confidence and context to evaluate the veracity and value of their information.
As one research team explained, imagine two financial advisors, each meeting with a client. One advisor is known for taking financial risks, while the other has a conservative approach. They both end up making the same recommendation on a stock, but their clients may respond differently—because of their advisor’s normal strategy. The first client thinks it must be a risky buy, while the second is sure the buy’s a solid bet.
Or, back at Trivia, we’ll take the word of our team’s usual expert on a topic over the person who knows the answer.
