Figure 3: Individual consistency across contexts in reliance on social information and reliance on payoff information.

(a) For each of the four contexts, we categorized subjects according to their reliance on social learning as low (<0.25) or high (>0.25), resulting in a quadruple of low-high values. The observed fraction of individuals with consistent (‘always high’ or ‘always low’) reliance on social learning is significantly larger than expected on the basis of independence across contexts (χ²=24.725, d.f.=1, n=128, P<0.001). (b) Similarly, subjects were categorized for each context according to their reliance on payoffs in social learning (low <0.5, and high ≥0.5). The observed fraction of individuals with consistent reliance on payoffs is significantly larger than expected (χ²=20.436, d.f.=1, n=128, P<0.001). The figure also shows the observed and expected frequency of ‘sensible switchers’ (individuals categorized as high in the best choice context and as low in the three social contexts). In both a and b, the ‘other’ category contains the remaining combinations of low-high values, none of which had a frequency >0.1.