Learning by experience and learning by imitating successful others

It is examined whether individuals learn from experience and/or by imitation. Usually individual judgmental learning displays systematic biases against the ideal Bayesian model. Imitation of successful others may decrease such effects. In an experiment subjects make investment decisions and report expectations. The profitability of an investment depends on the realization of a stationary distribution of states of the world. In the baseline subjects do not receive information about others' expectations; in the other conditions subjects perceive the expectations of others who observed either exactly the same events, or different events from the same distribution. The results indicate that people learn both from experience and by imitating successful others.