Promptly, psychologists settled on a narrative in which overimitation—a new term for children’s indiscriminate copying—is actually a brilliant achievement. It fits our species’ purported reliance on culture, because it makes us imitate behavior regardless of what it is good for; we transmit habits in full, without every individual making his or her own ill-informed decisions. Given the superior knowledge of adults, the best strategy for a child is to copy them without question. Blind faith is the only truly rational strategy, it was concluded with some relief.
