Parental perspectives on children’s social learning in four cultures

Social learning is key to the accumulation and transmission of cultural knowledge that underpins human evolutionary success. Cultural context is critical for understanding the content, mechanisms, and pathways through which social learning occurs. Although parents constitute an important part of children’s social environment, parental perspectives on children’s social learning across cultures are understudied. Here, we worked with BaYaka and Bandongo living in the Republic of the Congo, Scots living in Tayside, United Kingdom, and Chinese Americans living in the Greater Seattle Area, United States, representing considerable diversity across ecological, economic, social, and cultural dimensions. 303 parents/guardians answered free-list and open-ended questions regarding what and how children should learn from peers and adults. Across cultures, parents consistently reported that children should learn from adults via mechanisms like imitation and teaching, but with peers via collaboration. In terms of learning content, BaYaka and Bandongo parents more often reported that children should learn tasks, whereas Scottish and Chinese American parents focused on qualities and values. Overall, parental reports reveal cross-cultural regularities in normative social learning mechanisms, while systematic differences in content highlight the importance of accounting for cultural context when studying the interaction between how, what, and from whom children learn.