Through observational learning, individual behaviors can spread across a culture through a process called diffusion chain. This occurs when an individual first learns a behavior by observing another individual and that individual serves as a model through whom other individuals learn the behavior, and so on. wikipedia 
Observational learning is very beneficial when there are positive, reinforcing peer models involved. Although individuals go through four different stages for observational learning: attention; retention; production; and motivation, this does not simply mean that when an individual's attention is captured that it automatically sets the process in that exact order.
Mike Caulfield instructed educational technology students to copy each others work with two cautions: they should expect to defend what they copy in class, and, they should raise what they copy to their own standards if it isn't there already.