Please see the following publication:

Mesoudi et al. (2015) Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 282, 20142209.

for details of methodology (e.g. questionnaire question text). Note that some of the variables are means for seasons 1 and 2 because initially these were analysed together, whereas in the paper results are presented for each season.


Variable descriptions:

subject: unique participant id number
date: date on which the participant was run, in format ddmmyyyy
group: SL=social learning, IL=individual learning
culture: UK=White British, HK=Hong Kong, CI=Chinese Immigrant, CM=Chinese Mainland
age: participant’s age in years
sex: male or female
seasonX_copies: number of hunts, out of 29, on which the participant copied in season X (where X=1, 2 or 3)
sX_copybest: number of hunts, out of 29, on which the participant copied the best participant in season X            
total_copies: total number of hunts over all three seasons, out of 87, on which the participant copied
copy_frequency_sX: proportion of hunts on which the participant copied in season X
copy_frequency_all: proportion of all hunts on which the participant copied
score_seasonX: final cumulative score in season X, out of 30,000
score_s1_s2_averaged: mean score of seasons 1 and 2
rank_seasonX: rank in season X relative to the demonstrators, from 1 (best placed) to 6 (last placed)
rank_s1_s2_averaged: mean rank for seasons 1 and 2
collectivist_average: mean score of collectivist questions, from 1 to 7
individualist_average: mean score of individualist questions, from 1 to 7
horizontal_average: mean score of horizontal questions, from 1 to 7
vertical_average: mean score of vertical questions, from 1 to 7
collectivist_reversed: collectivist mean on reversed scores (1=7, 7=1)
individualist_reversed: individualist mean on reversed scores (1=7, 7=1)
horizontal_reversed: horizontal mean on reversed scores (1=7, 7=1)
vertical_reversed: vertical mean on reversed scores (1=7, 7=1)
culture_numeric: culture coded numerically
q_X: Likert response from 1 to 7 on question X                    
sX_copybest_propofcopies: proportion of total copies that the participant copied the best demonstrator in season X
sX_copybest_propof29: proportion of total hunts (29) that the participant copied the best demonstrator in season X
s1s2_score: mean score for seasons 1 and 2
s1s2_copies: mean number of copies for seasons 1 and 2
best_dem_S1S2: score of the best demonstrator in seasons 1 and 2
best_dem_SX: score of the best demonstrator in season X
s1s2_score_weighted: score divided by the best demonstrator’s score for that culture, for seasons 1 and 2
sX_score_weighted: score divided by the best demonstrator’s score for that culture, for season X