Observational learning enables us to make decisions by watching others' behaviors. The quality of such learning depends on the abilities of those we observe, but also on our beliefs about those abilities. We have previously demonstrated that observers learned better from demonstrators described as high vs. low in ability, regardless of their…

Recent empirical investigations have concentrated primarily on studying imitation as a social tool that satisfies social motivations, while other potential reasons for and forms of imitation have attracted less attention. These investigations have also focused on studying the role of pedagogy in imitative learning and set up most experiments in a…