Beyond social learning

Abstract

Cultural evolution requires the social transmission of information. For this reason, scholars have emphasized social learning when explaining how and why culture evolves. Yet cultural evolution results from many mechanisms operating in concert. Here, we argue that the emphasis on social learning has distracted scholars from appreciating both the full range of mechanisms contributing to cultural evolution and how interactions among those mechanisms and other factors affect the output of cultural evolution. We examine understudied mechanisms and other factors and call for a more inclusive programme of investigation that probes multiple levels of the organization, spanning the neural, cognitive-behavioural and populational levels. To guide our discussion, we focus on factors involved in three core topics of cultural evolution: the emergence of culture, the emergence of cumulative cultural evolution and the design of cultural traits. Studying mechanisms across levels can add explanatory power while revealing gaps and misconceptions in our knowledge. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Foundations of cultural evolution’.

Social information use and social information waste

“…Leading specialists of cultural evolution embrace this view, drawing on alleged cases of over-reliance on the example of others, such as the imitation of kamikaze suicides [5] or celebrity suicides [4,6], and the copying of prestigious models in domains where these models are clearly incompetent [7]. Recent approaches stress the need for the field to open the 'black box' of social learning [8], and address the complexity of the cognitive processes that determine how we acquire, reshape, or altogether reject cultural content. According to Singh et al [8], social learning mechanisms are intertwined with other cognitive mechanisms serving different functions, often unrelated to cultural transmission.…”

“…Recent approaches stress the need for the field to open the 'black box' of social learning [8], and address the complexity of the cognitive processes that determine how we acquire, reshape, or altogether reject cultural content. According to Singh et al [8], social learning mechanisms are intertwined with other cognitive mechanisms serving different functions, often unrelated to cultural transmission. Jansson et al [9] argue that social learning may be facilitated or hindered by whatever compatible (or incompatible) content one has already acquired, drawing our attention to its selective nature.…”

Human cumulative culture and the exploitation of natural phenomena

“…Second, it suggests that Type II CCE requires individuals to be willing to pay costs for hypothetical future benefits. This is likely to depend on an ability to pursue long-term goals, which might depend on capacities such as mental time travelling [ 88 , 89 ].…”

Foundations of cultural evolution

“…The first three parts of this theme issue correspond to the above themes of the Lorentz workshop. Most contributions were not written by workshop participants, but two articles [2,3] are 'group reports' that directly summarize insights obtained during the workshop.…”

“…neural or cognitive) processes that underpin this information transfer. Aiming to correct this bias in perspective, Singh et al [3] draw together evidence from diverse disciplines that point to the importance of other mechanisms (beyond social learning) for the understanding of the emergence of culture, the evolution of cumulative culture and the design of cultural traits. The authors have assembled a rich variety of studies, both on humans and other animals, that show how these largely royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rstb Phil.…”