The neuroscience of social conformity: implications for fundamental and applied research

Neurophysiological correlates of interpersonal discrepancy and social adjustment in an interactive decision-making task in dyads

Introduction

The pursuit of convergence and the social behavioral adjustment of conformity are fundamental cooperative behaviors that help people adjust their mental frameworks to reach a common goal. However, while social psychology has extensively studied conformity by its influence context, there is still plenty to investigate about the neural cognitive mechanisms involved in this behavior.

Methods

We proposed a paradigm with two phases, a pre-activation phase to enhance cooperative tendencies and, later, a social decision-making phase in which dyads had to make a perceptual estimation in three consecutive trials and could converge in their decisions without an explicit request or reward to do so. In Study 1, 80 participants were divided in two conditions. In one condition participants did the pre-activation phase alone, while in the other condition the two participants did it with their partners and could interact freely. In Study 2, we registered the electroencephalographical (EEG) activity of 36 participants in the social decision-making phase.

Results

Study 1 showed behavioral evidence of higher spontaneous convergence in participants who interacted in the pre-activation phase. Event related Potentials (ERP) recorded in Study 2 revealed signal differences in response divergence in different time intervals. Time-frequency analysis showed theta, alpha, and beta evidence related to cognitive control, attention, and reward processing associated with social convergence.

Discussion

Current results support the spontaneous convergence of behavior in dyads, with increased behavioral adjustment in those participants who have previously cooperated. In addition, neurophysiological components were associated with discrepancy levels between participants, and supported the validity of the experimental paradigm to study spontaneous social behavioral adaptation in experimental settings.

Is food preference innate instinct driven or human's free will?

The question whether food preference decisions are controlled by innate instincts, or a conscious decision-making process is still open. The answer to this question is important not only for neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers but also for food scientists and developers. Looking from different perspectives involved in food preference decisions could not only settle a long ongoing debate but also pave the way to understand why people prefer to eat what they eat.

Interpersonal alignment of neural evidence accumulation to social exchange of confidence

Private, subjective beliefs about uncertainty have been found to have idiosyncratic computational and neural substrates yet, humans share such beliefs seamlessly and cooperate successfully. Bringing together decision making under uncertainty and interpersonal alignment in communication, in a discovery plus pre-registered replication design, we examined the neuro-computational basis of the relationship between privately held and socially shared uncertainty. Examining confidence-speed-accuracy trade-off in uncertainty-ridden perceptual decisions under social vs isolated context, we found that shared (i.e. reported confidence) and subjective (inferred from pupillometry) uncertainty dynamically followed social information. An attractor neural network model incorporating social information as top-down additive input captured the observed behavior and demonstrated the emergence of social alignment in virtual dyadic simulations. Electroencephalography showed that social exchange of confidence modulated the neural signature of perceptual evidence accumulation in the central parietal cortex. Our findings offer a neural population model for interpersonal alignment of shared beliefs.

Enhanced endogenous oxytocin signaling in the brain modulates neural responses to social misalignment and promotes conformity in humans: A multi-locus genetic profile approach

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) is known to promote social conformity. However, the specific neurocognitive mechanisms underlying OT-induced conformity remain unclear. We aimed to address this gap by examining how genetic variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) is linked with behavioral conformity and its underlying neural systems. Specifically, we utilized the genotype-tissue expression database (GTEx) to create a novel multi-locus genetic profile score (MPS) that reflects the level of OXTR expression in the human brain. A total of 194 participants (Neuroimaging N = 50, Behavioral N = 144) performed a novel conformity task in which they viewed a series of word pairs depicting various moral values and virtues widely recognized in the United States. In each trial, participants indicated the relative importance of these words and subsequently learned about the majority opinion. Participants later rated the same word pairs a second time. Changes in participants' ratings between the first and second sessions were measured and analyzed with respect to social feedback, blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals, and OXTR MPS. We found that participants adjusted their ratings in accordance with the majority opinions. Social misalignment between self and others activated brain areas such as the striatum and the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC). However, unlike most findings from previous studies, activation in the pMFC during the inconsistent social feedback negatively, rather than positively, predicted behavioral conformity. Notably, those with higher OXTR MPS had reduced pMFC activation in the face of social misalignment, which led to greater conformity. Our findings suggest that OT may promote conformity by dampening the conflict-related signals in the pMFC. They also show that OXTR MPS may be useful for studying the effect of genes on highly complex human social traits, such as conformity.

Salient knowledge that others are also evaluating reduces judgment extremity

As companies increasingly conduct marketing research online (e.g., through social networking sites or their brand community platforms), the knowledge that others are also filling out the same surveys becomes increasingly salient to respondents. This research examines how the salience of this knowledge influences consumer judgments. Two important characteristics of our research paradigm are especially relevant to digital contexts: (1) judgements made by the consumers are neither observable nor subject to others' disapproval; and (2) consensus is not observable or verifiable. Nevertheless, in six main studies and one auxiliary study (Web Appendix), we found that high knowledge salience of others also evaluating reduced judgment extremity. Judgment extremity is quantified by the degree or strength of an evaluation or numeric estimate about a judgment target. This effect was driven by consumers' tendency to predict a moderate consensus and to conform to this perception. Implications for marketing research and crowdsourcing are discussed.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11747-021-00807-w.

Collective rule-breaking

Rules form an important part of our everyday lives. Here we explore the role of social influence in rule-breaking. In particular, we identify some of the cognitive mechanisms underlying rule-breaking and propose approaches for how they can be scaled up to the level of groups or crowds to better understand the emergence of collective rule-breaking. Social contagion plays an important role in such processes and different dynamics such as linear or rapid nonlinear spreading can have important consequences for interventions in rule-breaking. A closer integration of cognitive psychology, microsociology and mathematical modelling will be key to a deeper understanding of collective rule-breaking to turn this field of research into a predictive science.

The nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum exhibit greater dopaminergic innervation in humans compared to other primates

Recent evidence suggests that increased dopaminergic signaling within the dorsal striatum played a central role in the evolution of the human brain. This increase has been linked to human prosociality and language in what has been described as a dopamine-dominated striatum personality style. Increased striatal dopamine is associated with an increase in ventral striatal activity and promotes externally driven behaviors, including cooperation and social conformity. In contrast, decreased striatal dopamine is associated with increased dorsal striatal activity and favors internally driven and goal-oriented behaviors. Previous comparative studies have focused on the dorsal striatum, measuring dopaminergic innervation in the dorsal and medial caudate nucleus and putamen. Here, we add to this knowledge by examining regions of the ventral striatum. We quantified the density of tyrosine hydroxylase-immunoreactive axons, as a measure of dopaminergic innervation, in the nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum of humans, great apes, platyrrhine and cercopithecid monkeys. Our data show that humans have a significantly greater dopaminergic innervation in both structures, supporting the hypothesis that selection for a prosocial neurochemistry in the human basal ganglia may have contributed to the evolution of our uniquely social behavior profile.

Neural responses to implicit forms of peer influence in young adults

Young adults are acutely sensitive to peer influences. Differences have been found in neural sensitivity to explicit peer influences, such as seeing peer ratings on social media. The present study aimed to identify patterns of neural sensitivity to implicit peer influences, which involve more subtle cues that shape preferences and behaviors. Participants were 43 young adults (M_Age = 19.2 years; 24 males) who underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while completing a task used to assess neural responses to implicitly "socially tagged" symbols (previously judged by peers as liked vs. not liked, thus differing in apparent popularity) vs. novel symbols that carried no social meaning (not judged by peers). Results indicated greater activity in brain regions involved in salience detection (e.g., anterior cingulate cortex) and reward processing (e.g., caudate) to socially tagged vs. novel symbols, and particularly to unpopular symbols. Greater self-reported susceptibility to peer influence was related to more activity in the insula and caudate when viewing socially tagged vs. novel symbols. These results suggest that the brain is sensitive to even subtle cues varying in level of peer endorsement and neural sensitivity differed by the tendency to conform to peers' behaviors particularly in regions implicated in social motivation.

Impulsivity in Parkinson's disease patients treated with subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation-An exploratory study

BACKGROUND

Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) is a recognized treatment in Parkinson's disease (PD). Knowledge is still limited regarding the possible impact of STN-DBS on personality traits and the personality characteristics of PD patients who undergo surgery.

METHODS

To assess personality traits in relation to STN-DBS we did an ancillary protocol as part of a prospective randomized study that compared two surgical strategies. Patients were assessed with the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), the Urgency, Premeditation, Perseverance and Sensation Seeking impulse behavior scale, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale preoperatively and after one year of STN-DBS. EPQ and TCI baseline scores were compared with mean scores of healthy reference populations.

RESULTS

After 12-months of STN-DBS, there was a significant decline in Persistence compared to baseline. Preoperatively, the STN-DBS patients had significantly lower Persistence and Self-Transcendence scores, and significantly higher scores on Novelty-Seeking, Self-Directedness, Cooperativeness and on Social Conformity than referenced populations. No difference was found in Neuroticism or Harm-Avoidance scores. The baseline prevalence of alexithymia was low and at 1-year follow-up there was no significant change in alexithymia scores.

CONCLUSIONS

We found a higher baseline level of impulsivity in PD patients who underwent STN-DBS. After one year of STN-DBS, our results indicated that the treatment may affect the patients' personality by increasing certain aspects of impulsivity. There was no effect on alexithymia. The preoperative personality profile of PD patients might influence the outcome of STN-DBS.

MEG signatures of long-term effects of agreement and disagreement with the majority

People often change their beliefs by succumbing to an opinion of others. Such changes are often referred to as effects of social influence. While some previous studies have focused on the reinforcement learning mechanisms of social influence or on its internalization, others have reported evidence of changes in sensory processing evoked by social influence of peer groups. In this study, we used magnetoencephalographic (MEG) source imaging to further investigate the long-term effects of agreement and disagreement with the peer group. The study was composed of two sessions. During the first session, participants rated the trustworthiness of faces and subsequently learned group rating of each face. In the first session, a neural marker of an immediate mismatch between individual and group opinions was found in the posterior cingulate cortex, an area involved in conflict-monitoring and reinforcement learning. To identify the neural correlates of the long-lasting effect of the group opinion, we analysed MEG activity while participants rated faces during the second session. We found MEG traces of past disagreement or agreement with the peers at the parietal cortices 230 ms after the face onset. The neural activity of the superior parietal lobule, intraparietal sulcus, and precuneus was significantly stronger when the participant’s rating had previously differed from the ratings of the peers. The early MEG correlates of disagreement with the majority were followed by activity in the orbitofrontal cortex 320 ms after the face onset. Altogether, the results reveal the temporal dynamics of the neural mechanism of long-term effects of disagreement with the peer group: early signatures of modified face processing were followed by later markers of long-term social influence on the valuation process at the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Psychological factors underlying adherence to COVID-19 regulations: A commentary on how to promote compliance through mass media and limit the risk of a second wave

Considering the possibility of a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, this brief commentary is intended to share some suggestions on how to phrase public health advice about maintaining social distancing, using face masks in public spaces and adhering to personal hygiene measures. The discussion will be focused on three factors: empathy, positive mood and social influence. The commentary concludes with a series of brief suggestions aimed at policy makers and stakeholders involved in promoting adherence to regulations to avoid a second wave of the pandemic through mass media communications.

Neuroscience and the Social Origins of Moral Behavior: How Neural Underpinnings of Social Categorization and Conformity Affect Everyday Moral and Immoral Behavior

Neuroscientific evidence identifies the brain networks and cognitive processes involved in people’s thoughts and feelings about their behavior. This helps individuals understand the judgments and decisions they make with regard to their own and others’ moral and immoral behavior. This article complements prior reviews by focusing on the social origins of everyday moral and immoral behavior and reviewing neuroscientific research findings related to social conformity, categorization, and identification to demonstrate (a) when people are motivated by social norms of others to follow particular moral guidelines, (b) what prevents people from considering the moral implications of their actions for others, and (c) how people process feedback they receive from others about the appropriateness of their behavior. Revealing the neural mechanisms involved in the social processes that influence the moral and immoral behaviors people display helps researchers understand why and when different types of interventions aiming to regulate moral behavior are likely to be successful or unsuccessful.

LSD-induced increases in social adaptation to opinions similar to one's own are associated with stimulation of serotonin receptors

Adapting one's attitudes and behaviors to group norms is essential for successful social interaction and, thus, participation in society. Yet, despite its importance for societal and individual functioning, the underlying neuropharmacology is poorly understood. We therefore investigated its neurochemical and neural correlates in a pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) has been shown to alter social processing and therefore provides the unique opportunity to investigate the role of the 5-HT_2A receptor in social influence processing. Twenty-four healthy human volunteers received either (1) placebo + placebo, (2) placebo + LSD (100 µg), or (3) the 5-HT_2A receptor antagonist ketanserin (40 mg) + LSD (100 µg) at three different occasions in a double-blind, randomized, counterbalanced, cross-over design. LSD increases social adaptation but only if the opinions of others are similar to the individual's own. These increases were associated with increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex while participants received social feedback. Furthermore, pretreatment with the 5-HT_2A antagonist ketanserin fully blocked LSD-induced changes during feedback processing, indicating a key role of the 5-HT_2A system in social feedback processing. Our results highlight the crucial role of the 5-HT-system in social influence and, thus, provide important insight into the neuropharmacological basis of social cognition and behavior.

Mentalizing during social InterAction: A four component model

Mentalizing, conventionally defined as the process in which we infer the inner thoughts and intentions of others, is a fundamental component of human social cognition. Yet its role, and the nuanced layers involved, in real world social interaction are rarely discussed. To account for this lack of theory, we propose the interactive mentalizing theory (IMT) -to emphasize the role of metacognition in different mentalizing components. We discuss the connection between mentalizing, metacognition, and social interaction in the context of four elements of mentalizing: (i) Metacognition-inference of our own thought processes and social cognitions and which is central to all other components of mentalizing including: (ii) first-order mentalizing-inferring the thoughts and intentions of an agent's mind; (iii) personal second-order mentalizing-inference of other's mentalizing of one's own mind; (iv) Collective mentalizing: which takes at least two forms (a) vicarious mentalizing: adopting another's mentalizing of an agent (i.e., what we think others think of an agent) and (b) co-mentalizing: mentalizing about an agent in conjunction with others' mentalizing of that agent (i.e., conforming to others beliefs about another agent's internal states). The weights of these four elements is determined by metacognitive insight and confidence in one's own or another's mentalizing ability, yielding a dynamic interaction between these circuits. To advance our knowledge on mentalizing during live social interaction, we identify how these subprocesses can be organized by different target agents and facilitated by combining computational modeling and interactive brain approaches.

The key to group fitness: The presence of another synchronizes moral attitudes and neural responses during moral decision-making

Morality encompasses a set of norms that originate from the group's consensus and cultural evolution. Accordingly, the mere presence of another person is very well capable of shaping moral judgment and decision-making in a way that benefits group coherence. Here, we measured justice sensitivity (JSI), implicit moral attitudes (mIAT), and neural activity during mental simulation of interpersonal morally-laden behaviors (helping and harming) when participants were either alone or when they thought a confederate was present. Both JSI and mIAT, as well as various brain networks, were modulated and, further, synchronized by the presence of a confederate. Participants with lower scores on the mIAT and JSI enhanced their moral attitudes when they were in the presence of a confederate. This change was driven by increased signal in the amygdala and anterior insula when the low mIAT participants mentally simulated harming another person, but was effected by decreased activity in the dorsomedial- and dorsolateral-prefrontal cortex in the high JSI participants. The presence of another significantly impacts moral attitudes as well as neural correlates underlying moral behavior. Together, the results support the view that both individual dispositions and social influence shape and synchronize people's moral computations, and fits with the theoretical perspective that morality has evolved to promote group fitness.

Human Self-Domestication and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis of Addiction: How Humans Evolved a Unique Vulnerability

Humans are more vulnerable to addiction in comparison to all other mammals, including nonhuman primates, yet there is a lack of research addressing this. This paper reviews the field of comparative addiction neuroscience, highlighting the significant inter-species variation in the mesocortical dopaminergic and other neuromodulatory systems involved in addiction. Artificial selection gives rise to significant changes in neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and behaviour as shown in certain rodent strains and other domesticated animals. These changes occur over a few generations, relatively short periods of time in evolutionary terms, and demonstrate how dynamic these neuromodulatory systems are in response to the environment. During the course of human evolution, traits crucial to our survival, expansion and domination (traits such as the ability to innovate, adapt to different environments and thrive in a civilization) have been positively selected for, yet also predispose humans to addiction. This is evident in our unique neurochemistry and receptor-drug activation potencies. Examples of these are provided as possible targets for precision medicine.

Neural Mechanisms Involved in Social Conformity and Psychopathic Traits: Prediction Errors, Reward Processing and Saliency

Aligning behavior in favor of group norms, i.e., social conformity, can help to successfully adapt to uncertain environments and may result in social approval. This may lead to enhanced feelings of belongingness and is found to be associated with reward-related activations in the brain. Individuals high on psychopathic traits violate group norms regularly. Yet, it is unclear how psychopathic traits are related to neural mechanisms involved in social conformity. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study includes 42 healthy females scoring low or high on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory questionnaire (PPI). Participants were asked to rate the trustworthiness of 120 faces while lying in the scanner. After rating each face, participants were presented with the group rating of European students. In an unanticipated second part participants rated all faces again, allowing us to focus on two main contrasts: (1) “Social conflict”: group opinion in conflict with the participant’s rating vs. group opinion aligned with participant rating; and (2) “Conformity”: conflict trials followed by conformity vs. conflict trials followed by non-conformity. Behaviorally, the two groups showed similar conformity behavior. fMRI results showed that both groups activated the nucleus accumbens (NAc) following alignment, suggesting the central role of prediction errors and reward. The data also showed a significant interaction between group and conformity in the amygdala. Following conflicts, females scoring low on psychopathic traits showed a trend in enhanced amygdala activation for conformity relative to non-conformity. Additionally, results showed a trend significant group effect for non-conformity. Females scoring high on psychopathic traits showed more activation for non-conformity compared to females scoring low on psychopathic traits, suggesting altered emotional salience of experiencing conflict depending on psychopathic traits. Taken together, these results support the importance of investigating the role of relevant traits in adaptive behavior when facing uncertain social situations and the neural mechanisms involved in this process.

The Influence of the Consumer Ethnocentrism and Cultural Familiarity on Brand Preference: Evidence of Event-Related Potential (ERP)

The tendency of customers’ preference to their local brands over the foreign ones is known as consumer ethnocentrism, and it is an important issue in international marketing. This study aims at identifying the behavioral and neural correlates of Consumer Ethnocentrism in the field of brand preference, using event-related potential (ERP). We sampled subjects from two ethnic groups, a Chinese ethnic group and a sub-Saharan Black African group from Zhejiang University. The subjects faced two sequential stimuli, S1 followed by S2. S1 consisted of 40 pictures of 20 Chinese and 20 Black Africans people wearing traditional clothes, and S2 consisted of 40 fake brand-logos which were divided randomly into two groups of 20 each. The subjects were informed that the people in S1 purchased and recommended the products with the brand-logos presented in S2, and the subjects were asked to rate their preference degree toward these logos. The brand-logos were called the “in-group recommended logos” if the recommenders in S1 were the same race as the subjects, otherwise, the “out-group recommended logos.” The results revealed that the race of the brand-logo recommender highly impacted the Chinese subjects’ preference for the brand-logos. The N200 component elicited by the in-group recommended logos were significantly lower than those elicited by the out-group recommended logos. Additionally, there was evidence that being familiar with foreign cultures reduced consumer ethnocentrism. The African subjects were familiar with Chinese people and adopted a Chinese culture, as a result, they did not differ in showing preferences between the in-group and out-group recommended logos.

An fMRI study on the neural correlates of social conformity to a sexual minority

Social conformity refers to the tendency to align one's own behaviors, beliefs and values to those of others. Little is known about social influence coming from a minority group. To test whether social pressure from sexual minorities triggers avoidance-motivated behaviors, we explored how being influenced by the preferences of gay peers modifies the behavioral and neural reactivity of individuals defined as in- vs. out- groups on the basis of sexual orientation. To this aim, we combined fMRI with a social conformity paradigm in which heterosexual and gay/bisexual (hereafter non-exclusively heterosexual, NEH) individuals provided with male body attractiveness ratings by a fictitious group of gay students may or may not alter their previous rating and may or may not conform to the mean. Behaviorally, conformity to the minority preference was found in in-group NEH more than in out-group heterosexuals. Analysis of BOLD signal showed that social pressure brought about increased brain activity in frontal and parietal regions associated with the detection of social conflict. These results show that members of a sexual majority group display a smaller level of conformity when a sexual minority group exerts social influence. However, the neural correlates of this modulation are yet to be clarified.

Peer effects on control-averse behavior

The urge to rebel against external control affects social interactions in many domains of our society with potentially far-reaching consequences. Nevertheless, it has remained unclear to what degree this control-averse behavior might be influenced by the people in our surroundings, our peers. In an experimental paradigm with real restrictions of the subjects' freedom of choice and no systematic incentives to follow the peer, we are able to demonstrate both negative and positive peer effects on control-averse behavior. First, we find that information about a peer's strongly control-averse behavior, although irrelevant for the subjects' outcome, increases the subjects' individual control-averse behavior. Second, we find that information about a peer's more generous and only weakly control-averse behavior increases subjects' generous behavior, even though it is associated with greater costs for the subjects. Critically, each subject's behavior determined the monetary payoff of both the subject and a third person, thereby constituting a social behavior with actual consequences. Interestingly, these peer effects are not moderated by self-assessments of the general resistance to peer influence or the general tendency to rebel against restrictions of one's freedom of choice. Contributing new insights into a complex and highly relevant social phenomenon, our results indicate that information about a single peer's behavior can influence individual control-averse behavior.

Intergroup social influence on emotion processing in the brain

Emotions usually occur in a social context; yet little is known about how similar and dissimilar others influence our emotions. In the current study, we examined whether ingroup and outgroup members have differential influence on emotion processing at the behavioral and neural levels. To this end, we recruited 45 participants to rate a series of images displaying people engaged in different emotional contexts. Participants then underwent an fMRI scan where they viewed the same images along with information on how ingroup and outgroup members rated them, and they were asked to rate the images again. We found that participants shifted their emotions to be more in alignment with the ingroup over the outgroup, and that neural regions implicated in positive valuation [ventral striatum (VS) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)], mentalizing [dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), and temporal pole], as well as emotion processing and salience detection (amygdala and insula), linearly tracked this behavior such that the extent of neural activity in these regions paralleled changes in participants' emotions. Results illustrate the powerful impact that ingroup members have on our emotions.

A neurochemical hypothesis for the origin of hominids

It has always been difficult to account for the evolution of certain human characters such as language, empathy, and altruism via individual reproductive success. However, the striatum, a subcortical region originally thought to be exclusively motor, is now known to contribute to social behaviors and "personality styles" that may link such complexities with natural selection. We here report that the human striatum exhibits a unique neurochemical profile that differs dramatically from those of other primates. The human signature of elevated striatal dopamine, serotonin, and neuropeptide Y, coupled with lowered acetylcholine, systematically favors externally driven behavior and greatly amplifies sensitivity to social cues that promote social conformity, empathy, and altruism. We propose that selection induced an initial form of this profile in early hominids, which increased their affiliative behavior, and that this shift either preceded or accompanied the adoption of bipedality and elimination of the sectorial canine. We further hypothesize that these changes were critical for increased individual fitness and promoted the adoption of social monogamy, which progressively increased cooperation as well as a dependence on tradition-based cultural transmission. These eventually facilitated the acquisition of language by elevating the reproductive advantage afforded those most sensitive to social cues.

Animal social learning: associations and adaptations

Social learning, learning from others, is a powerful process known to impact the success and survival of humans and non-human animals alike. Yet we understand little about the neurocognitive and other processes that underpin social learning. Social learning has often been assumed to involve specialized, derived cognitive processes that evolve and develop independently from other processes. However, this assumption is increasingly questioned, and evidence from a variety of organisms demonstrates that current, recent, and early life experience all predict the reliance on social information and thus can potentially explain variation in social learning as a result of experiential effects rather than evolved differences. General associative learning processes, rather than adaptive specializations, may underpin much social learning, as well as social learning strategies. Uncovering these distinctions is important to a variety of fields, for example by widening current views of the possible breadth and adaptive flexibility of social learning. Nonetheless, just like adaptationist evolutionary explanations, associationist explanations for social learning cannot be assumed, and empirical work is required to uncover the mechanisms involved and their impact on the efficacy of social learning. This work is being done, but more is needed. Current evidence suggests that much social learning may be based on ‘ordinary’ processes but with extraordinary consequences.