Adaptive Trade-offs in the Use of Social and Personal Information

Abstract

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Conformity without majority? The case for demarcating social from majority influences

“…Furthermore, social influence can be more or less pressing depending on modifiers such as species, salience or perceived efficacy (e.g. Latane & Wolf, 1981;Tanford & Penrod, 1984; see also van Bergen, Coolen, & Laland, 2004;Boogert et al, 2013;Chapman et al, 2008;Coolen et al, 2003;Kendal et al, 2009). Thus, social influence is not a fixed effect, but a contingent vector with an associated magnitude.…”

“…In turn, this finding implies the more general premise that in any species the values of social and individual information exist within an intricate trade-off that can, but does not necessarily have to, be moderated by the feature 'majority' (e.g. see Kendal et al, 2009;Kendal, Coolen, van Bergen, & Laland, 2005). In other words, if the value attributed to social information trumps the value attributed to individual information, then behaviour and/or convictions could be adjusted through the pull of social information without any majority influence.…”

“…What is the perceived efficacy of the socially demonstrated option? ; see Kendal et al, 2009;Perreault, Moya, & Boyd, 2012;Rieucau & Giraldeau, 2011).…”

“…Recognizing that learning entails a complex arena of individual, social and contextual characteristics (e.g. see Kendal, Coolen, & Laland, 2009), it might be that other learning biases have been at play during the acclimatization process of the immigrating males, such as a bias to value social information over individual information when the environment is uncertain (where a majority bias need not be at play).…”

A reappreciation of ‘conformity’

“…Van de Waal et al (2013;also see Whiten & van de Waal, this issue) acknowledge that such drastic changes in the lives of the vervets could have facilitated the socalled 'copy-when-uncertain' rule (Laland, 2004), a social learning heuristic for which evidence has been found across a wide range of taxa (e.g. see Kendal, Coolen, & Laland, 2009). They explicitly echo our suggestion by writing: 'The fitness of foraging decisions made by wild primates like those we studied will be governed by a host of complex factors that are inherently unknown to foragers, ranging from dietary constituents to plant toxins and competing needs such as predator vigilance: Exploiting the prior discoveries of local experts may be an optimal strategy, overriding opposing knowledge gained in a different habitat such as one's original group' (van de Waal et al, 2013, p. 484).…”