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Many animals, including humans, acquire valuable skills and knowledge by copying others. Scientists refer to this as social learning. It is one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of behavioral research and sits at the interface of many academic disciplines, including biology, experimental psychology, economics, and cognitive neuroscience.Social Learningprovides a comprehensive, practical guide to the research methods of this important emerging field. William Hoppitt and Kevin Laland define the mechanisms thought to underlie social learning and demonstrate how to distinguish them experimentally in the laboratory. They present techniques for detecting and quantifying social learning in nature, including statistical modeling of the spatial distribution of behavior traits. They also describe the latest theory and empirical findings on social learning strategies, and introduce readers to mathematical methods and models used in the study of cultural evolution. This book is an indispensable tool for researchers and an essential primer for students. Provides a comprehensive, practical guide to social learning researchCombines theoretical and empirical approachesDescribes techniques for the laboratory and the fieldCovers social learning mechanisms and strategies, statistical modeling techniques for field data, mathematical modeling of cultural evolution, and more

PurposeSocial exchange theory and social learning theory are widely employed in many disciplines but there is little application on the intention to leave and job performance among academic staff. Therefore, this study intends to examine the relationships among supervisor support, intention to leave and job performance along with mediating role of self-confidence in a developing context.Design/methodology/approachData were collected through questionnaires from the academic staff of private Pakistani universities. The model was tested using data collected from 295 respondents by using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.FindingsThe results revealed that supervisor support influenced job performance positively through the mediating role of self-confidence. Conversely, supervisor support influenced intention to leave negatively through the mediating role of self-confidence. In addition, the results also showed the direct effect of supervisor support on employees' job performance and intention to leave.Practical implicationsThe results of this study suggest that the supervisor must provide adequate support to the academic staff, which helps them to develop their self-confidence. In addition, self-confidence is helpful for the employees to improve their job performance and reduce their intention to leave.Originality/valueThe study contributes to theory building in the area of supervisor support by enriching the understanding of the processes carrying the effect of supervisor support on desirable workplace outcomes. In addition, the study also explicates the less understood nature of relationship between supervisor support, job performance, and intention to leave through the mediating role of self-confidence in the Pakistani context.

PurposeWith the growing demand for ethical standards in the prevailing business environment, ethical leadership has been under increasingly more focus. Based on the social exchange theory and social learning theory, this study scrutinized the impact of ethical leadership on the presentation of ethical conduct by employees through the ethical climate. Notably, this study scrutinised the moderating function of the person-organisation fit (P-O fit) in relation of ethical climate and the ethical conduct of employees.Design/methodology/approachTo evaluate the research hypotheses, two-wave data were collected from 295 individuals who are currently employed in various Iraqi organizations (i.e. manufacturing, medical and insurance industries).FindingsIn line with the hypotheses, the outcomes from a sample of 295 workers working in different Iraqi entities exhibited a positive relation between the ethical behaviour of leaders and the ethical conduct of employees in the ethical climate. Moreover, it was observed that the P-O fit of employees moderated the relationship between ethical climate and the ethical conduct of employees such that the relationship was more robust for those with a high P-O fit in comparison to those with a low P-O fit.Research limitations/implicationsThe primary limitation of this study is in the data, which was obtained from a single source. Although the study conducted two surveys and utilised a mediation and moderation variables model that was less likely to be influenced by common method bias (CMB) (Podsakoff et al., 2012), one cannot completely rule out CMB. Apart from the potential effects of the CMB, the consistency of the empirical findings could have also been compromised since self-reported data were utilised in measuring ethical behaviour, which can be a very complex and sensitive issue. For this reason, the social desirability response bias cannot be ruled out completely. When possible, future studies must gather data from multiple sources. Furthermore, supervisors must evaluate the ethical behaviour of employees. Another limitation was that the findings of this study were based on a sample in a Middle Eastern cultural context such as in Iraq. Perhaps, the particular cultural features of this context, which encompassed, among other things, a strong adherence to religious values (Moaddel, 2010), could have influenced the findings of this study. It is true that the effects of differences (P–O fit) are highly likely to replicate across cultural contexts (Triandis et al., 1988). However, it can be seen that further studies are needed to evaluate the context-sensitivity of these findings (Whetten, 2009) by analysing other cultures, where the importance of religiosity is on the decline (i.e. in Western countries, Ribberink et al., 2018) or where the cultural features are very much different from those that apply to Iraq. Lastly, other external factors were not taken into account by this study as it tried to explain ethical behaviour. Ethics is a highly complex subject and is influenced by numerous variables at the organisational, individual and external environment levels. Thus, caution must be observed when making inferences from the present study which, to a certain degree, offered a simplified version of ethical behaviour by concentrating on a few variables such as the Arab culture's traditional ideology, which dominates even science (Abu Khalil, 1992). In addition, there are the political conflicts in the Middle Eastern cultural context such as what is happening in Iraq (Harff, 2018). Thus, it is important to include such aspects in future researches.Practical implicationsIn terms of management, the findings send a clear signal to those in the upper echelon that, without ignoring the issue of ethics in organizations, employees are a critical aspect to be taken into account to encourage ethical behaviour at the workplace. This study has important practical implications. First, this study determined that ethical leadership (here, of the supervisors) positively influences the behaviour of subordinates (refers to the supervisors here); this in turn further improves the ethical behaviour of employees. It is vital that managers or supervisors are motivated to practice ethical leadership because they directly influence the employees. It has been suggested that top managers, especially chief executive officers, have the ability to shape the ethical climate, which also influences the ethical behaviour of employees further. This study offered several feasible ways that managers can apply to achieve that. In particular, top managers may utilise the ethical climate as a way of communicating the ethical values that they have to their subordinates, thereby serving as a motivation for the subordinates to adopt an ethical behaviour. It was also suggested by this study that ethical climate and the P–O fit may, to some degree, substitute each other as they influence the ethical behaviour of employees. Therefore, firms that were identified to have a low level of ethical standards, practices, and policies, at least from the employees' perspective, are better poised to conduct ethical issues in order to construct the ethical behaviour of their subordinates. More importantly, it is highly essential that the value congruence between an organization and its followers be considered.Social implicationsThis study highlighted the notion of ethics and how it’s essential for society. Ethics refer to the norms, standards, and values that direct the behavior of an individual. Ethical behaviour is vital in society because we need to be treated with respect as human beings.Originality/valueThis study responds to recent calls for more research to identify factors which may strengthen or mitigate the influence ethical behavior in the workplace such as ethical leadership, ethical climate and Person–Organization.

The dramatic increase in social media use has challenged traditional social structures and shifted a great deal of interpersonal communication from the physical world to cyberspace. Much of this social media communication has been positive: Anyone around the world who has access to the Internet has the potential to communicate with and attract a massive global audience. Unfortunately, such ubiquitous communication can be also used for negative purposes such as cyberbullying, which is the focus of this paper. Previous research on cyberbullying, consisting of 135 articles, has improved the understanding of why individuals—mostly adolescents—engage in cyberbullying. However, our study addresses two key gaps in this literature: (1) how the information technology (IT) artifact fosters/inhibits cyberbullying and (2) why people are socialized to engage in cyberbullying. To address these gaps, we propose the social media cyberbullying model (SMCBM), which modifies Akers’ [Akers RL (2011) Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and Deviance , 2nd ed. (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ)] social structure and social learning model. Because Akers developed his model for crimes in the physical world, we add a rich conceptualization of anonymity composed of five subconstructs as a key social media structural variable in the SMCBM to account for the IT artifact. We tested the SMCBM with 1,003 adults who have engaged in cyberbullying. The empirical findings support the SMCBM. Heavy social media use combined with anonymity facilitates the social learning process of cyberbullying in social media in a way that fosters cyberbullying. Our results indicate new directions for cyberbullying research and implications for anticyberbullying practices.

Approaches to classroom instruction have evolved considerably over the past 50 years. This progress has been spurred by the development of several learning principles and methods of instruction, including active learning, student-centered learning, collaborative learning, experiential learning, and problem-based learning. In the present paper, we suggest that these seemingly different strategies share important underlying characteristics and can be viewed as complimentary components of a broader approach to classroom instruction called transformational teaching. Transformational teaching involves creating dynamic relationships between teachers, students, and a shared body of knowledge to promote student learning and personal growth. From this perspective, instructors are intellectual coaches who create teams of students who collaborate with each other and with their teacher to master bodies of information. Teachers assume the traditional role of facilitating students' acquisition of key course concepts, but do so while enhancing students' personal development and attitudes toward learning. They accomplish these goals by establishing a shared vision for a course, providing modeling and mastery experiences, challenging and encouraging students, personalizing attention and feedback, creating experiential lessons that transcend the boundaries of the classroom, and promoting ample opportunities for preflection and reflection. We propose that these methods are synergistically related and, when used together, maximize students' potential for intellectual and personal growth.

Social learning (learning through observation or interaction with other individuals) is widespread in nature and is central to the remarkable success of humanity, yet it remains unclear why copying is profitable and how to copy most effectively. To address these questions, we organized a computer tournament in which entrants submitted strategies specifying how to use social learning and its asocial alternative (for example, trial-and-error learning) to acquire adaptive behavior in a complex environment. Most current theory predicts the emergence of mixed strategies that rely on some combination of the two types of learning. In the tournament, however, strategies that relied heavily on social learning were found to be remarkably successful, even when asocial information was no more costly than social information. Social learning proved advantageous because individuals frequently demonstrated the highest-payoff behavior in their repertoire, inadvertently filtering information for copiers. The winning strategy (discountmachine) relied nearly exclusively on social learning and weighted information according to the time since acquisition.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Adult Learning Principles Social Cognitive Theory Reflection and Reflective Practice Transformative Learning Self ‐ directed Learning Experiential Learning Situated Learning Communities of Practice Connections Acknowledgement References