We routinely observe others' choices and use them to guide our own. Whose choices influence us more, and why? Prior work has focused on the effect of perceived similarity between two individuals (self and others), such as the degree of overlap in past choices or explicitly recognizable group affiliations. In the real world, however, any dyadic…

Collecting (or "sampling") information that one expects to be useful is a powerful way to facilitate learning. However, relatively little is known about how people decide which information is worth sampling over the course of learning. We describe several alternative models of how people might decide to collect a piece of information…