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Chimento M, Aplin LM. Understanding the Role of Naive Learners in Cultural Change. Am Nat 2024; 203:695-712. [PMID: 38781528 DOI: 10.1086/730110] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/25/2024]
Abstract
AbstractA change to a population's social network is a change to the substrate of cultural transmission, affecting behavioral diversity and adaptive cultural evolution. While features of network structure such as population size and density have been well studied, less is understood about the influence of social processes such as population turnover-or the repeated replacement of individuals by naive individuals. Experimental data have led to the hypothesis that naive learners can drive cultural evolution by better assessing the relative value of behaviors, although this hypothesis has been expressed only verbally. We conducted a formal exploration of this hypothesis using a generative model that concurrently simulated its two key ingredients: social transmission and reinforcement learning. We simulated competition between high- and low-reward behaviors while varying turnover magnitude and tempo. Variation in turnover influenced changes in the distributions of cultural behaviors, irrespective of initial knowledge-state conditions. We found optimal turnover regimes that amplified the production of higher reward behaviors through two key mechanisms: repertoire composition and enhanced valuation by agents that knew both behaviors. These effects depended on network and learning parameters. Our model provides formal theoretical support for, and predictions about, the hypothesis that naive learners can shape cultural change through their enhanced sampling ability. By moving from experimental data to theory, we illuminate an underdiscussed generative process that can lead to changes in cultural behavior, arising from an interaction between social dynamics and learning.
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2
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Clark Barrett H, Armstrong J. Climate change adaptation and the back of the invisible hand. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2023; 378:20220406. [PMID: 37718605 PMCID: PMC10505848 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0406] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2023] [Accepted: 06/14/2023] [Indexed: 09/19/2023] Open
Abstract
A good deal of contemporary work in cultural evolutionary theory focuses on the adaptive significance of culture. In this paper, we make the case that scientifically accurate and politically feasible responses to the climate crisis require a complex understanding of human cultural practices of niche construction that moves beyond the adaptive significance of culture. We develop this thesis in two related ways. First, we argue that cumulative cultural practices of niche construction can generate stable equilibria and runaway selection processes that result in long-term existential risks within and across cultural groups. We dub this the back of the invisible hand. Second, we argue that the ability of cultural groups to innovate technological solutions to environmental problems is highly constrained in ways that are exacerbated by sustained intergroup conflict, inequality and by inherently unpredictable cascades in climate change and human migration patterns. After developing these theoretical points about human cultural practices of niche construction in detail, we conclude our discussion with some tentative practical suggestions about the way that cultural evolutionary history can more fruitfully be used in efforts to remit the climate crisis and contribute to sustainable practices of human climate change adaptation. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture'.
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Affiliation(s)
- H. Clark Barrett
- Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1553, USA
| | - Josh Armstrong
- Department of Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1553, USA
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Lavender Forsyth GA, Chaudhuri A, Atkinson QD. Validating the dual evolutionary foundations of political values in a US sample. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1189771. [PMID: 37425180 PMCID: PMC10326618 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1189771] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/20/2023] [Accepted: 05/30/2023] [Indexed: 07/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Psychological research repeatedly identifies two dimensions of political values. Recent work argues that these dimensions reflect the dual evolutionary foundations of human social and political life: a trade-off between cooperation and competition that generates differences in values about social inequality, and a trade-off in managing group coordination that generates differences in values about social control. Existing scales used to measure political values, however, were created prior to this framework. Here, we introduce the Dual Foundations Scale, designed to capture values about the two trade-offs. We validate the scale across two studies, showing it accurately and reliably measures both dimensions. Our results support key predictions of the dual foundations framework and pave the way for future work on the foundations of political ideology.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Ananish Chaudhuri
- Department of Economics, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Quentin Douglas Atkinson
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
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4
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Nöbel S, Jacquet A, Isabel G, Pocheville A, Seabright P, Danchin E. Conformity in mate choice, the overlooked social component of animal and human culture. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2023; 98:132-149. [PMID: 36173001 PMCID: PMC10087591 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12899] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/23/2021] [Revised: 08/16/2022] [Accepted: 08/19/2022] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
Abstract
Although conformity as a major driver for human cultural evolution is a well-accepted and intensely studied phenomenon, its importance for non-human animal culture has been largely overlooked until recently. This limited for decades the possibility of studying the roots of human culture. Here, we provide a historical review of the study of conformity in both humans and non-human animals. We identify gaps in knowledge and propose an evolutionary route towards the sophisticated cultural processes that characterize humanity. A landmark in the study of conformity is Solomon Asch's famous experiment on humans in 1955. By contrast, interest in conformity among evolutionary biologists has only become salient since the turn of the new millennium. A striking result of our review is that, although studies of conformity have examined many biological contexts, only one looked at mate choice. This is surprising because mate choice is probably the only context in which conformity has self-reinforcing advantages across generations. Within a metapopulation, i.e. a group of subpopulations connected by dispersing individuals, dispersers able to conform to the local preference for a given type of mate have a strong and multigenerational fitness advantage. This is because once females within one subpopulation locally show a bias for one type of males, immigrant females who do not conform to the local trend have sons, grandsons, etc. of the non-preferred phenotype, which negatively and cumulatively affects fitness over generations in a process reminiscent of the Fisher runaway process. This led us to suggest a sex-driven origin of conformity, indicating a possible evolutionary route towards animal and human culture that is rooted in the basic, and thus ancient, social constraints acting on mating preferences within a metapopulation. In a generic model, we show that dispersal among subpopulations within a metapopulation can effectively maintain independent Fisher runaway processes within subpopulations, while favouring the evolution of social learning and conformity at the metapopulation scale; both being essential for the evolution of long-lasting local traditions. The proposed evolutionary route to social learning and conformity casts surprising light on one of the major processes that much later participated in making us human. We further highlight several research avenues to define the spectrum of conformity better, and to account for its complexity. Future studies of conformity should incorporate experimental manipulation of group majority. We also encourage the study of potential links between conformity and mate copying, animal aggregations, and collective actions. Moreover, validation of the sex-driven origin of conformity will rest on the capacity of human and evolutionary sciences to investigate jointly the origin of social learning and conformity. This constitutes a stimulating common agenda and militates for a rapprochement between these two currently largely independent research areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sabine Nöbel
- Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, Toulouse, France.,Laboratoire Évolution et Diversité Biologique (EDB UMR 5174), Université de Toulouse, CNRS, IRD, 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062, Toulouse cedex 9, France
| | - Antoine Jacquet
- Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, Toulouse, France.,Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, Toulouse, France
| | - Guillaume Isabel
- Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Centre de Biologie Intégrative, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, UPS, 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062, Toulouse cedex 9, France
| | - Arnaud Pocheville
- Laboratoire Évolution et Diversité Biologique (EDB UMR 5174), Université de Toulouse, CNRS, IRD, 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062, Toulouse cedex 9, France
| | - Paul Seabright
- Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, Toulouse, France.,Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, Toulouse, France
| | - Etienne Danchin
- Laboratoire Évolution et Diversité Biologique (EDB UMR 5174), Université de Toulouse, CNRS, IRD, 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062, Toulouse cedex 9, France
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5
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Combining Conformist and Payoff Bias in Cultural Evolution : An Integrated Model for Human Decision-Making. HUMAN NATURE (HAWTHORNE, N.Y.) 2022; 33:463-484. [PMID: 36515860 DOI: 10.1007/s12110-022-09435-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/21/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
Most research on transmission biases in cultural evolution has treated different biases as distinct strategies. Here I present a model that combines both frequency dependent bias (including conformist bias) and payoff bias in a single decision-making calculus and show that such an integrated learning strategy may be superior to relying on either bias alone. Natural selection may operate on humans' relative dependence on frequency and payoff information, but both are likely to contribute to the spread of variants with high payoffs. Importantly, the magnitude of conformist bias affects the evolutionary dynamics, and I show that an intermediate level of conformity may be most adaptive and may spontaneously evolve as it resists the invasion of low-payoff variants yet enables the fixation of high-payoff variants in the population.
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Morgan TJH, Suchow JW, Griffiths TL. The experimental evolution of human culture: flexibility, fidelity and environmental instability. Proc Biol Sci 2022; 289:20221614. [PMID: 36321489 PMCID: PMC9627710 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1614] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/19/2022] [Accepted: 10/07/2022] [Indexed: 09/19/2023] Open
Abstract
The past 2 Myr have seen both unprecedented environmental instability and the evolution of the human capacity for complex culture. This, along with the observation that cultural evolution occurs faster than genetic evolution, has led to the suggestion that culture is an adaptation to an unstable environment. We test this hypothesis by examining the ability of human social learning to respond to environmental changes. We do this by inserting human participants (n = 4800) into evolutionary simulations with a changing environment while varying the social information available to individuals across five conditions. We find that human social learning shows some signs of adaptation to environmental instability, including critical social learning, the adoption of up-and-coming traits and, unexpectedly, contrariness. However, these are insufficient to avoid significant fitness declines when the environment changes, and many individuals are highly conformist, which exacerbates the fitness effects of environmental change. We conclude that human social learning reflects a compromise between the competing needs for flexibility to accommodate environmental change and fidelity to accurately transmit valuable cultural information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas J. H. Morgan
- School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, 900 S. Cady Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
- Institute of Human Origins, Arizona State University, 777 E University Drive, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
| | - Jordan W. Suchow
- School of Business, Stevens Institute of Technology, 1 Castle Point Terrace, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
| | - Thomas L. Griffiths
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, 320 Peretsman Scully Hall, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
- Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, 417 Computer Science, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
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7
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Bullinaria JA. Effect of Environmental Change Distribution on Artificial Life Simulations. ARTIFICIAL LIFE 2022; 28:134-153. [PMID: 35580069 DOI: 10.1162/artl_a_00366] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
It is already well known that environmental variation has a big effect on real evolution, and similar effects have been found in evolutionary artificial life simulations. In particular, a lot of research has been carried out on how the various evolutionary outcomes depend on the noise distributions representing the environmental changes, and how important it is for models to use inverse power-law distributions with the right noise colour. However, there are two distinct factors of relevance-the average total magnitude of change per unit time and the distribution of individual change magnitudes-and misleading results may emerge if those factors are not properly separated. This article makes use of an existing agent-based artificial life modeling framework to explore this issue using models previously tried and tested for other purposes. It begins by demonstrating how the total magnitude and distribution effects can easily be confused, and goes on to show how it is possible to untangle the influence of these interacting factors by using correlation-based normalization. It then presents a series of simulation results demonstrating that interesting dependencies on the noise distribution remain after separating those factors, but many effects involving the noise colour of inverse power-law distributions disappear, and very similar results arise across restricted-range white-noise distributions. The average total magnitude of change per unit time is found to have a substantial effect on the simulation outcomes, but the distribution of individual changes has very little effect. A robust counterexample is thereby provided to the idea that it is always important to use accurate environmental change distributions in artificial life models.
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9
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Grove M, Timbrell L, Jolley B, Polack F, Borg JM. The Importance of Noise Colour in Simulations of Evolutionary Systems. ARTIFICIAL LIFE 2022; 27:1-19. [PMID: 35148391 DOI: 10.1162/artl_a_00354] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Simulations of evolutionary dynamics often employ white noise as a model of stochastic environmental variation. Whilst white noise has the advantages of being simply generated and analytically tractable, empirical analyses demonstrate that most real environmental time series have power spectral densities consistent with pink or red noise, in which lower frequencies contribute proportionally greater amplitudes than higher frequencies. Simulated white noise environments may therefore fail to capture key components of real environmental time series, leading to erroneous results. To explore the effects of different noise colours on evolving populations, a simple evolutionary model of the interaction between life-history and the specialism-generalism axis was developed. Simulations were conducted using a range of noise colours as the environments to which agents adapted. Results demonstrate complex interactions between noise colour, reproductive rate, and the degree of evolved generalism; importantly, contradictory conclusions arise from simulations using white as opposed to red noise, suggesting that noise colour plays a fundamental role in generating adaptive responses. These results are discussed in the context of previous research on evolutionary responses to fluctuating environments, and it is suggested that Artificial Life as a field should embrace a wider spectrum of coloured noise models to ensure that results are truly representative of environmental and evolutionary dynamics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matt Grove
- University of Liverpool, Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology.
| | - Lucy Timbrell
- University of Liverpool, Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology.
| | - Ben Jolley
- Keele University, UK, School of Computing and Mathematics.
| | - Fiona Polack
- Keele University, UK, School of Computing and Mathematics.
| | - James M Borg
- Keele University, UK, School of Computing and Mathematics
- Aston University, UK, School of Informatics and Digital Engineering.
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10
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Sheppard CE, Heaphy R, Cant MA, Marshall HH. Individual foraging specialization in group-living species. Anim Behav 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2021.10.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
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11
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Indigo NL, Jolly CJ, Kelly E, Smith J, Webb JK, Phillips BL. Effects of learning and adaptation on population viability. CONSERVATION BIOLOGY : THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR CONSERVATION BIOLOGY 2021; 35:1245-1255. [PMID: 33502048 DOI: 10.1111/cobi.13691] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/05/2020] [Revised: 09/07/2020] [Accepted: 10/28/2020] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Cultural adaptation is one means by which conservationists may help populations adapt to threats. A learned behavior may protect an individual from a threat, and the behavior can be transmitted horizontally (within generations) and vertically (between generations), rapidly conferring population-level protection. Although possible in theory, it remains unclear whether such manipulations work in a conservation setting; what conditions are required for them to work; and how they might affect the evolutionary process. We examined models in which a population can adapt through both genetic and cultural mechanisms. Our work was motivated by the invasion of highly toxic cane toads (Rhinella marina) across northern Australia and the resultant declines of endangered northern quolls (Dasyurus hallucatus), which attack and are fatally poisoned by the toxic toads. We examined whether a novel management strategy in which wild quolls are trained to avoid toads can reduce extinction probability. We used a simulation model tailored to quoll life history. Within simulations, individuals were trained and a continuous evolving trait determined innate tendency to attack toads. We applied this model in a population viability setting. The strategy reduced extinction probability only when heritability of innate aversion was low (<20%) and when trained mothers trained >70% of their young to avoid toads. When these conditions were met, genetic adaptation was slower, but rapid cultural adaptation kept the population extant while genetic adaptation was completed. To gain insight into the evolutionary dynamics (in which we saw a transitory peak in cultural adaptation over time), we also developed a simple analytical model of evolutionary dynamics. This model showed that the strength of natural selection declined as the cultural transmission rate increased and that adaptation proceeded only when the rate of cultural transmission was below a critical value determined by the relative levels of protection conferred by genetic versus cultural mechanisms. Together, our models showed that cultural adaptation can play a powerful role in preventing extinction, but that rates of cultural transmission need to be high for this to occur.
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Affiliation(s)
- Naomi L Indigo
- School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123 Broadway, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia
| | - Chris J Jolly
- School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia
| | - Ella Kelly
- School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia
| | - James Smith
- Natural Resources Kangaroo Island, Department of Environment and Water, Kingscote, SA, 5223, Australia
| | - Jonathan K Webb
- School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123 Broadway, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia
| | - Ben L Phillips
- School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia
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12
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Animal culture: Newcomers help adopt more efficient behaviors. Curr Biol 2021; 31:R736-R738. [PMID: 34102126 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.03.102] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Novel behaviors spread via social learning and may persist in groups even when alternative, more efficient solutions become available. A study in birds shows that adoption of more efficient behaviors can be achieved via population turnover as new group members learn and spread more efficient behaviors.
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13
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Lange EC, Travis J, Hughes KA, M'Gonigle LK. Can You Trust Who You See? The Evolution of Socially Cued Anticipatory Plasticity. Am Nat 2021; 197:E129-E142. [PMID: 33755539 DOI: 10.1086/712919] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Abstract
AbstractThe social environment can affect development and fitness. However, we do not know how selection acts on individuals that cue developmental pathways using features of the social environment. Socially cued anticipatory plasticity (SCAP) is a hypothetical strategy whereby juveniles use social cues to alter development to match their adult phenotype to the social environment that they expect to encounter. While intuitively appealing, the evolution of such plasticity is a puzzle, because the cue changes when individuals use it. Can socially cued plasticity evolve when such a feedback occurs? We use individual-based simulations to model evolution of SCAP in an environment that fluctuates between favoring each of two discrete phenotypes. We found that socially cued plasticity evolved, but only when strong selection acted on survival rather than on fecundity differences between adult phenotypes. In this case, the social cue reliably predicted which phenotype would be favored on maturation. Surprisingly, costs to plasticity increased the range of conditions under which it was adaptive. In the absence of costs, evolution led to a state where SCAP individuals could not effectively respond to environmental changes. Costs to plasticity lowered the proportion of the population that used SCAP, which in turn increased the reliability of the social cue and allowed individuals that used socially cued plasticity to switch between the favored phenotypes more consistently. Our results suggest that the evolution of adaptive plasticity in response to social cues may represent a larger class of problems in which evolution is hard to predict because of feedbacks among critical processes.
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Borg JM, Channon A. The Effect of Social Information Use Without Learning on the Evolution of Social Behavior. ARTIFICIAL LIFE 2020; 26:431-454. [PMID: 33284664 DOI: 10.1162/artl_a_00328] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
In a recent article by Borg and Channon it was shown that social information alone, decoupled from any within-lifetime learning, can result in improved performance on a food-foraging task compared to when social information is unavailable. Here we assess whether access to social information leads to significant behavioral differences both when access to social information leads to improved performance on the task, and when it does not: Do any behaviors resulting from social information use, such as movement and increased agent interaction, persist even when the ability to discriminate between poisonous and non-poisonous food is no better than when social information is unavailable? Using a neuroevolutionary artificial life simulation, we show that social information use can lead to the emergence of behaviors that differ from when social information is unavailable, and that these behaviors act as a promoter of agent interaction. The results presented here suggest that the introduction of social information is sufficient, even when decoupled from within-lifetime learning, for the emergence of pro-social behaviors. We believe this work to be the first use of an artificial evolutionary system to explore the behavioral consequences of social information use in the absence of within-lifetime learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- James M Borg
- Keele University, School of Computing and Mathematics.
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15
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Jones JH, Ready E, Pisor AC. Want climate-change adaptation? Evolutionary theory can help. Am J Hum Biol 2020; 33:e23539. [PMID: 33247621 DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.23539] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2020] [Revised: 11/04/2020] [Accepted: 11/07/2020] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
The idea of adaptation, in which an organism or population becomes better suited to its environment, is used in a variety of disciplines. Originating in evolutionary biology, adaptation has been a central theme in biological anthropology and human ecology. More recently, the study of adaptation in the context of climate change has become an important topic of research in the social sciences. While there are clearly commonalities in the different uses of the concept of adaptation in these fields, there are also substantial differences. We describe these differences and suggest that the study of climate-change adaptation could benefit from a re-integration with biological and evolutionary conceptions of human adaptation. This integration would allow us to employ the substantial theoretical tools of evolutionary biology and anthropology to understand what promotes or impedes adaptation. The evolutionary perspective on adaptation focuses on diversity because diversity drives adaptive evolution. Population structures are also critical in facilitating or preventing adaptation to local environmental conditions. This suggests that climate-change adaptation should focus on the sources of innovation and social structures that nurture innovations and allow them to spread. Truly innovative ideas are likely to arise on the periphery of cohesive social groups and spread inward. The evolutionary perspective also suggests that we pay careful attention to correlated traits, which can distort adaptive trajectories, as well as to the importance of risk management in adaptations to variable or uncertain environments. Finally, we suggest that climate-change adaptation could benefit from a broader study of how local groups adapt to their dynamic environments, a process we call "autochthonous adaptation."
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Affiliation(s)
- James Holland Jones
- Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Elspeth Ready
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Anne C Pisor
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.,Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA
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Frankenhuis WE, Nettle D, Dall SRX. A case for environmental statistics of early-life effects. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2020; 374:20180110. [PMID: 30966883 PMCID: PMC6460088 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0110] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
There is enduring debate over the question of which early-life effects are adaptive and which ones are not. Mathematical modelling shows that early-life effects can be adaptive in environments that have particular statistical properties, such as reliable cues to current conditions and high autocorrelation of environmental states. However, few empirical studies have measured these properties, leading to an impasse. Progress, therefore, depends on research that quantifies cue reliability and autocorrelation of environmental parameters in real environments. These statistics may be different for social and non-social aspects of the environment. In this paper, we summarize evolutionary models of early-life effects. Then, we discuss empirical data on environmental statistics from a range of disciplines. We highlight cases where data on environmental statistics have been used to test competing explanations of early-life effects. We conclude by providing guidelines for new data collection and reflections on future directions. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Developing differences: early-life effects and evolutionary medicine'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Willem E Frankenhuis
- 1 Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University , Nijmegen 6500 HE , The Netherlands
| | - Daniel Nettle
- 2 Centre for Behaviour and Evolution and Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU , UK
| | - Sasha R X Dall
- 3 Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter , Penryn TR10 9FE , UK
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Barrett B, Zepeda E, Pollack L, Munson A, Sih A. Counter-Culture: Does Social Learning Help or Hinder Adaptive Response to Human-Induced Rapid Environmental Change? Front Ecol Evol 2019. [DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2019.00183] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
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19
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Richerson PJ. An integrated bayesian theory of phenotypic flexibility. Behav Processes 2019; 161:54-64. [DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2018.02.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/09/2017] [Revised: 02/02/2018] [Accepted: 02/02/2018] [Indexed: 12/28/2022]
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21
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Sheppard CE, Marshall HH, Inger R, Thompson FJ, Vitikainen EIK, Barker S, Nichols HJ, Wells DA, McDonald RA, Cant MA. Decoupling of Genetic and Cultural Inheritance in a Wild Mammal. Curr Biol 2018; 28:1846-1850.e2. [PMID: 29804813 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.05.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/26/2018] [Revised: 04/26/2018] [Accepted: 05/01/2018] [Indexed: 02/03/2023]
Abstract
Cultural inheritance, the transmission of socially learned information across generations, is a non-genetic, "second inheritance system" capable of shaping phenotypic variation in humans and many non-human animals [1-3]. Studies of wild animals show that conformity [4, 5] and biases toward copying particular individuals [6, 7] can result in the rapid spread of culturally transmitted behavioral traits and a consequent increase in behavioral homogeneity within groups and populations [8, 9]. These findings support classic models of cultural evolution [10, 11], which predict that many-to-one or one-to-many transmission erodes within-group variance in culturally inherited traits. However, classic theory [10, 11] also predicts that within-group heterogeneity is preserved when offspring each learn from an exclusive role model. We tested this prediction in a wild mammal, the banded mongoose (Mungos mungo), in which offspring are reared by specific adult carers that are not their parents, providing an opportunity to disentangle genetic and cultural inheritance of behavior. We show using stable isotope analysis that young mongooses inherit their adult foraging niche from cultural role models, not from their genetic parents. As predicted by theory, one-to-one cultural transmission prevented blending inheritance and allowed the stable coexistence of distinct behavioral traditions within the same social groups. Our results confirm that cultural inheritance via role models can promote rather than erode behavioral heterogeneity in natural populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Catherine E Sheppard
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK
| | - Harry H Marshall
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK; Centre for Research in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour, University of Roehampton, London SW15 4JD, UK
| | - Richard Inger
- Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK
| | - Faye J Thompson
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK
| | - Emma I K Vitikainen
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK
| | - Sam Barker
- Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK
| | - Hazel J Nichols
- School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK
| | - David A Wells
- School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK
| | - Robbie A McDonald
- Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK
| | - Michael A Cant
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK.
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22
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Weinberger VP, Quiñinao C, Marquet PA. Innovation and the growth of human population. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2018; 372:rstb.2016.0415. [PMID: 29061888 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0415] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 07/31/2017] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Biodiversity is sustained by and is essential to the services that ecosystems provide. Different species would use these services in different ways, or adaptive strategies, which are sustained in time by continuous innovations. Using this framework, we postulate a model for a biological species (Homo sapiens) in a finite world where innovations, aimed at increasing the flux of ecosystem services (a measure of habitat quality), increase with population size, and have positive effects on the generation of new innovations (positive feedback) as well as costs in terms of negatively affecting the provision of ecosystem services. We applied this model to human populations, where technological innovations are driven by cumulative cultural evolution. Our model shows that depending on the net impact of a technology on the provision of ecosystem services (θ), and the strength of technological feedback (ξ), different regimes can result. Among them, the human population can fill the entire planet while maximizing their well-being, but not exhaust ecosystem services. However, this outcome requires positive or green technologies that increase the provision of ecosystem services with few negative externalities or environmental costs, and that have a strong positive feedback in generating new technologies of the same kind. If the feedback is small, then the technological stock can collapse together with the human population. Scenarios where technological innovations generate net negative impacts may be associated with a limited technological stock as well as a limited human population at equilibrium and the potential for collapse. The only way to fill the planet with humans under this scenario of negative technologies is by reducing the technological stock to a minimum. Otherwise, the only feasible equilibrium is associated with population collapse. Our model points out that technological innovations per se may not help humans to grow and dominate the planet. Instead, different possibilities unfold for our future depending on their impact on the environment and on further innovation.This article is part of the themed issue 'Process and pattern in innovations from cells to societies'.
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Affiliation(s)
- V P Weinberger
- Departamento de Ecología, CSIC-PUC), Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Alameda 340, Santiago, Chile.,Instituto de Ecología & Biodiversidad (IEB), Casilla 653, Santiago, Chile
| | - C Quiñinao
- CIMFAV, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de Valparaíso, General Cruz 222, Valparaíso, Chile.,Instituto de Ciencias de la Ingeniería, Escuela de Ingeniería, Universidad de O'Higgins, Av. Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins 611, Rancagua, Chile
| | - P A Marquet
- Departamento de Ecología, CSIC-PUC), Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Alameda 340, Santiago, Chile .,Laboratorio Internacional en Cambio Global (LINCGlobal, CSIC-PUC), Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Alameda 340, Santiago, Chile.,Instituto de Ecología & Biodiversidad (IEB), Casilla 653, Santiago, Chile.,The Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA.,Centro de Cambio Global (PUC-Global), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.,Instituto de Sistemas Complejos de Valparaíso (ISCV), Artillería 470, Cerro Artillería, Valparaíso, Chile
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23
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Abstract
Researchers have recently proposed that "moralistic" religions-those with moral doctrines, moralistic supernatural punishment, and lower emphasis on ritual-emerged as an effect of greater wealth and material security. One interpretation appeals to life history theory, predicting that individuals with "slow life history" strategies will be more attracted to moralistic traditions as a means to judge those with "fast life history" strategies. As we had reservations about the validity of this application of life history theory, we tested these predictions with a data set consisting of 592 individuals from eight diverse societies. Our sample includes individuals from a wide range of traditions, including world religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, but also local traditions rooted in beliefs in animism, ancestor worship, and worship of spirits associated with nature. We first test for the presence of associations between material security, years of formal education, and reproductive success. Consistent with popular life history predictions, we find evidence that material security and education are associated with reduced reproduction. Building on this, we then test whether or not these demographic factors predict the moral concern, punitiveness, attributed knowledge-breadth, and frequency of ritual devotions towards two deities in each society. Here, we find no reliable evidence of a relationship between number of children, material security, or formal education and the individual-level religious beliefs and behaviors. We conclude with a discussion of why life-history theory is an inadequate interpretation for the emergence of factors typifying the moralistic traditions.
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24
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Equifinality in empirical studies of cultural transmission. Behav Processes 2018; 161:129-138. [PMID: 29369783 DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2018.01.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/15/2017] [Revised: 01/12/2018] [Accepted: 01/15/2018] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
Cultural systems exhibit equifinal behavior - a single final state may be arrived at via different mechanisms and/or from different initial states. Potential for equifinality exists in all empirical studies of cultural transmission including controlled experiments, observational field research, and computational simulations. Acknowledging and anticipating the existence of equifinality is important in empirical studies of social learning and cultural evolution; it helps us understand the limitations of analytical approaches and can improve our ability to predict the dynamics of cultural transmission. Here, I illustrate and discuss examples of equifinality in studies of social learning, and how certain experimental designs might be prone to it. I then review examples of equifinality discussed in the social learning literature, namely the use of s-shaped diffusion curves to discern individual from social learning and operational definitions and analytical approaches used in studies of conformist transmission. While equifinality exists to some extent in all studies of social learning, I make suggestions for how to address instances of it, with an emphasis on using data simulation and methodological verification alongside modern statistical approaches that emphasize prediction and model comparison. In cases where evaluated learning mechanisms are equifinal due to non-methodological factors, I suggest that this is not always a problem if it helps us predict cultural change. In some cases, equifinal learning mechanisms might offer insight into how both individual learning, social learning strategies and other endogenous social factors might by important in structuring cultural dynamics and within- and between-group heterogeneity.
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Barrett BJ, McElreath RL, Perry SE. Pay-off-biased social learning underlies the diffusion of novel extractive foraging traditions in a wild primate. Proc Biol Sci 2018; 284:rspb.2017.0358. [PMID: 28592681 PMCID: PMC5474070 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2017.0358] [Citation(s) in RCA: 51] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/27/2017] [Accepted: 05/11/2017] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
The type and variety of learning strategies used by individuals to acquire behaviours in the wild are poorly understood, despite the presence of behavioural traditions in diverse taxa. Social learning strategies such as conformity can be broadly adaptive, but may also retard the spread of adaptive innovations. Strategies like pay-off-biased learning, by contrast, are effective at diffusing new behaviour but may perform poorly when adaptive behaviour is common. We present a field experiment in a wild primate, Cebus capucinus, that introduced a novel food item and documented the innovation and diffusion of successful extraction techniques. We develop a multilevel, Bayesian statistical analysis that allows us to quantify individual-level evidence for different social and individual learning strategies. We find that pay-off-biased and age-biased social learning are primarily responsible for the diffusion of new techniques. We find no evidence of conformity; instead rare techniques receive slightly increased attention. We also find substantial and important variation in individual learning strategies that is patterned by age, with younger individuals being more influenced by both social information and their own individual experience. The aggregate cultural dynamics in turn depend upon the variation in learning strategies and the age structure of the wild population.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brendan J Barrett
- Animal Behavior Graduate Group, University of California, Davis, CA, USA .,Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
| | - Richard L McElreath
- Animal Behavior Graduate Group, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.,Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.,Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzing, Germany
| | - Susan E Perry
- Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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26
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Aplin LM, Sheldon BC, McElreath R. Conformity does not perpetuate suboptimal traditions in a wild population of songbirds. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2017; 114:7830-7837. [PMID: 28739943 PMCID: PMC5544276 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1621067114] [Citation(s) in RCA: 63] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Social learning is important to the life history of many animals, helping individuals to acquire new adaptive behavior. However despite long-running debate, it remains an open question whether a reliance on social learning can also lead to mismatched or maladaptive behavior. In a previous study, we experimentally induced traditions for opening a bidirectional door puzzle box in replicate subpopulations of the great tit Parus major Individuals were conformist social learners, resulting in stable cultural behaviors. Here, we vary the rewards gained by these techniques to ask to what extent established behaviors are flexible to changing conditions. When subpopulations with established foraging traditions for one technique were subjected to a reduced foraging payoff, 49% of birds switched their behavior to a higher-payoff foraging technique after only 14 days, with younger individuals showing a faster rate of change. We elucidated the decision-making process for each individual, using a mechanistic learning model to demonstrate that, perhaps surprisingly, this population-level change was achieved without significant asocial exploration and without any evidence for payoff-biased copying. Rather, by combining conformist social learning with payoff-sensitive individual reinforcement (updating of experience), individuals and populations could both acquire adaptive behavior and track environmental change.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucy M Aplin
- Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom;
| | - Ben C Sheldon
- Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom
| | - Richard McElreath
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616
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27
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The Evolution of Facultative Conformity Based on Similarity. PLoS One 2016; 11:e0168551. [PMID: 28002461 PMCID: PMC5176289 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0168551] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/15/2016] [Accepted: 12/02/2016] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Conformist social learning can have a pronounced impact on the cultural evolution of human societies, and it can shape both the genetic and cultural evolution of human social behavior more broadly. Conformist social learning is beneficial when the social learner and the demonstrators from whom she learns are similar in the sense that the same behavior is optimal for both. Otherwise, the social learner's optimum is likely to be rare among demonstrators, and conformity is costly. The trade-off between these two situations has figured prominently in the longstanding debate about the evolution of conformity, but the importance of the trade-off can depend critically on the flexibility of one's social learning strategy. We developed a gene-culture coevolutionary model that allows cognition to encode and process information about the similarity between naive learners and experienced demonstrators. Facultative social learning strategies that condition on perceived similarity evolve under certain circumstances. When this happens, facultative adjustments are often asymmetric. Asymmetric adjustments mean that the tendency to follow the majority when learners perceive demonstrators as similar is stronger than the tendency to follow the minority when learners perceive demonstrators as different. In an associated incentivized experiment, we found that social learners adjusted how they used social information based on perceived similarity, but adjustments were symmetric. The symmetry of adjustments completely eliminated the commonly assumed trade-off between cases in which learners and demonstrators share an optimum versus cases in which they do not. In a second experiment that maximized the potential for social learners to follow their preferred strategies, a few social learners exhibited an inclination to follow the majority. Most, however, did not respond systematically to social information. Additionally, in the complete absence of information about their similarity to demonstrators, social learners were unwilling to make assumptions about whether they shared an optimum with demonstrators. Instead, social learners simply ignored social information even though this was the only information available. Our results suggest that social cognition equips people to use conformity in a discriminating fashion that moderates the evolutionary trade-offs that would occur if conformist social learning was rigidly applied.
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28
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Cultural Evolutionary Perspectives on Creativity and Human Innovation. Trends Ecol Evol 2015; 30:736-754. [PMID: 26598058 DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2015.10.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 59] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/11/2014] [Revised: 10/12/2015] [Accepted: 10/13/2015] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
Cultural traits originate through creative or innovative processes, which might be crucial to understanding how culture evolves and accumulates. However, because of its complexity and apparent subjectivity, creativity has remained largely unexplored as the dynamic underpinning of cultural evolution. Here, we explore the approach to innovation commonly taken in theoretical studies of cultural evolution and discuss its limitations. Drawing insights from cognitive science, psychology, archeology, and even animal behavior, it is possible to generate a formal description of creativity and to incorporate a dynamic theory of creativity into models of cultural evolution. We discuss the implications of such models for our understanding of the archaeological record and the history of hominid culture.
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29
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Abstract
Helping is a cornerstone of social organization and commonplace in human societies. A major challenge for the evolutionary sciences is to explain how cooperation is maintained in large populations with high levels of migration, conditions under which cooperators can be exploited by selfish individuals. Cultural group selection models posit that such large-scale cooperation evolves via selection acting on populations among which behavioural variation is maintained by the cultural transmission of cooperative norms. These models assume that individuals acquire cooperative strategies via social learning. This assumption remains empirically untested. Here, I test this by investigating whether individuals employ conformist or payoff-biased learning in public goods games conducted in 14 villages of a forager-horticulturist society, the Pahari Korwa of India. Individuals did not show a clear tendency to conform or to be payoff-biased and are highly variable in their use of social learning. This variation is partly explained by both individual and village characteristics. The tendency to conform decreases and to be payoff-biased increases as the value of the modal contribution increases. These findings suggest that the use of social learning in cooperative dilemmas is contingent on individuals' circumstances and environments, and question the existence of stably transmitted cultural norms of cooperation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shakti Lamba
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK Department of Anthropology, University College London, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW, UK
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30
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Katsnelson E, Lotem A, Feldman MW. ASSORTATIVE SOCIAL LEARNING AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR HUMAN (AND ANIMAL?) SOCIETIES. Evolution 2014; 68:1894-906. [DOI: 10.1111/evo.12403] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/01/2013] [Accepted: 02/28/2014] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Edith Katsnelson
- Department of Biology; Stanford University; Stanford California 94305
| | - Arnon Lotem
- Department of Zoology; Faculty of Life Sciences; Tel Aviv University; Tel-Aviv 69978 Israel
| | - Marcus W. Feldman
- Department of Biology; Stanford University; Stanford California 94305
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31
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Smaldino PE, Newson L, Schank JC, Richerson PJ. Simulating the evolution of the human family: cooperative breeding increases in harsh environments. PLoS One 2013; 8:e80753. [PMID: 24278318 PMCID: PMC3835414 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080753] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2013] [Accepted: 10/10/2013] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Verbal and mathematical models that consider the costs and benefits of behavioral strategies have been useful in explaining animal behavior and are often used as the basis of evolutionary explanations of human behavior. In most cases, however, these models do not account for the effects that group structure and cultural traditions within a human population have on the costs and benefits of its members' decisions. Nor do they consider the likelihood that cultural as well as genetic traits will be subject to natural selection. In this paper, we present an agent-based model that incorporates some key aspects of human social structure and life history. We investigate the evolution of a population under conditions of different environmental harshness and in which selection can occur at the level of the group as well as the level of the individual. We focus on the evolution of a socially learned characteristic related to individuals' willingness to contribute to raising the offspring of others within their family group. We find that environmental harshness increases the frequency of individuals who make such contributions. However, under the conditions we stipulate, we also find that environmental variability can allow groups to survive with lower frequencies of helpers. The model presented here is inevitably a simplified representation of a human population, but it provides a basis for future modeling work toward evolutionary explanations of human behavior that consider the influence of both genetic and cultural transmission of behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Paul E. Smaldino
- Center for Advanced Modeling in the Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
| | - Lesley Newson
- Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States of America
- College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
| | - Jeffrey C. Schank
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States of America
| | - Peter J. Richerson
- Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States of America
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33
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Derex M, Godelle B, Raymond M. Social learners require process information to outperform individual learners. Evolution 2012; 67:688-97. [PMID: 23461320 DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2012.01804.x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Humans exhibit a rich and complex material culture with no equivalent in animals. Also, social learning, a crucial requirement for culture, is particularly developed in humans and provides a means to accumulate knowledge over time and to develop advanced technologies. However, the type of social learning required for the evolution of this complex material culture is still debated. Here, using a complex and opaque virtual task, the efficiency of individual learning and two types of social learning (product-copying and process-copying) were compared. We found that (1) individuals from process-copying groups outperformed individuals from product-copying groups or individual learners, whereas access to product information was not a sufficient condition for providing an advantage to social learners compared to individual learners; (2) social learning did not seem to affect the exploration of the fitness landscape; (3) social learning led to strong within-group convergence and also to between-group convergence, and (4) individuals used widely variable social learning strategies. The implications of these results for cumulative culture evolution are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maxime Derex
- University of Montpellier II, Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier Cedex 5, France.
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34
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Adaptive Social Learning Strategies in Temporally and Spatially Varying Environments. HUMAN NATURE-AN INTERDISCIPLINARY BIOSOCIAL PERSPECTIVE 2012; 23:386-418. [DOI: 10.1007/s12110-012-9151-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 73] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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35
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Whitehead H, Lusseau D. Animal social networks as substrate for cultural behavioural diversity. J Theor Biol 2011; 294:19-28. [PMID: 22051567 DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.10.025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/28/2011] [Revised: 10/17/2011] [Accepted: 10/18/2011] [Indexed: 10/15/2022]
Abstract
We used individual-based stochastic models to examine how social structure influences the diversity of socially learned behaviour within a non-human population. For continuous behavioural variables we modelled three forms of dyadic social learning, averaging the behavioural value of the two individuals, random transfer of information from one individual to the other, and directional transfer from the individual with highest behavioural value to the other. Learning had potential error. We also examined the transfer of categorical behaviour between individuals with random directionality and two forms of error, the adoption of a randomly chosen existing behavioural category or the innovation of a new type of behaviour. In populations without social structuring the diversity of culturally transmitted behaviour increased with learning error and population size. When the populations were structured socially either by making individuals members of permanent social units or by giving them overlapping ranges, behavioural diversity increased with network modularity under all scenarios, although the proportional increase varied considerably between continuous and categorical behaviour, with transmission mechanism, and population size. Although functions of the form e(c)¹(m)⁻(c)² + (c)³(Log(N)) predicted the mean increase in diversity with modularity (m) and population size (N), behavioural diversity could be highly unpredictable both between simulations with the same set of parameters, and within runs. Errors in social learning and social structuring generally promote behavioural diversity. Consequently, social learning may be considered to produce culture in populations whose social structure is sufficiently modular.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hal Whitehead
- Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford St, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4J1.
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37
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Rendell L, Fogarty L, Hoppitt WJE, Morgan TJH, Webster MM, Laland KN. Cognitive culture: theoretical and empirical insights into social learning strategies. Trends Cogn Sci 2011; 15:68-76. [PMID: 21215677 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2010.12.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 290] [Impact Index Per Article: 22.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/01/2010] [Revised: 12/06/2010] [Accepted: 12/06/2010] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Research into social learning (learning from others) has expanded significantly in recent years, not least because of productive interactions between theoretical and empirical approaches. This has been coupled with a new emphasis on learning strategies, which places social learning within a cognitive decision-making framework. Understanding when, how and why individuals learn from others is a significant challenge, but one that is critical to numerous fields in multiple academic disciplines, including the study of social cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luke Rendell
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Biology, University of St. Andrews, Bute Medical Building, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9TS, UK.
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Rendell L, Fogarty L, Laland KN. Rogers' paradox recast and resolved: population structure and the evolution of social learning strategies. Evolution 2009; 64:534-48. [PMID: 19674093 DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00817.x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 88] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
We explore the evolution of reliance on social and asocial learning using a spatially explicit stochastic model. Our analysis considers the relative merits of four evolved strategies, two pure strategies (asocial and social learning) and two conditional strategies (the "critical social learner," which learns asocially only when copying fails, and the "conditional social learner," which copies only when asocial learning fails). We find that spatial structure generates outcomes that do not always conform to the finding of earlier theoretical analyses that social learning does not enhance average individual fitness at equilibrium (Rogers' paradox). Although we describe circumstances under which the strategy of pure social learning increases the average fitness of individuals, we find that spatial structure introduces a new paradox, which is that social learning can spread even when it decreases the average fitness of individuals below that of asocial learners. We also show that the critical social learner and conditional social learner both provide solutions to the aforementioned paradoxes, although we find some conditions in which pure (random) social learning out-competes both conditional strategies. Finally, we consider the relative merits of critical and conditional social learning under various conditions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luke Rendell
- School of Biology, University of St Andrews, Bute Building, Westburn Lane, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9TS, United Kingdom.
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39
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Conformists may kill civilizations. Nature 2009. [DOI: 10.1038/news.2009.593] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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