Do Anthropologists Need learning Theory?¹

After a flurry of attention to and use of explicit learning theory by anthropologists in the 1940s, few direct citations of it appear in anthropological work. This paper explores current psychological learning theory, including social learning; resolution of dissonance, coercive persuasion, compliance, latent learning, discovery learning, guided learning, and information‐processing models to see what might be useful to anthropologists. LEARNING THEORY, SOCIAL LEARNING, ACQUISITION OF CULTURE, INITIATION, CRITICAL LEARNlNC PERIODS.