  Despite strong evidence for peer effects, little is known about how
individuals balance intrinsic preferences and social learning in different
choice environments. Using a combination of experiments and discrete choice
modeling, we show that intrinsic preferences and social learning jointly
influence participants' decisions, but their relative importance varies across
choice tasks and environments. Intrinsic preferences guide participants'
decisions in a subjective choice task, while social learning determines
participants' decisions in a task with an objectively correct solution. A
choice environment in which people expect to be rewarded for their choices
reinforces the influence of intrinsic preferences, whereas an environment in
which people expect to be punished for their choices reinforces conformist
social learning. We use simulations to discuss the implications of these
findings for the polarization of behavior.
