Collective knowledge and the dynamics of culture in chimpanzees

Abstract

Social learning in non-human primates has been studied experimentally for over 120 years, yet until the present century this was limited to what one individual learns from a single other. Evidence of group-wide traditions in the wild then highlighted the collective context for social learning, and broader ‘diffusion experiments’ have since demonstrated transmission at the community level. In the present article, we describe and set in comparative perspective three strands of our recent research that further explore the collective dimensions of culture and cumulative culture in chimpanzees. First, exposing small communities of chimpanzees to contexts incorporating increasingly challenging, but more rewarding tool use opportunities revealed solutions arising through the combination of different individuals' discoveries, spreading to become shared innovations. The second series of experiments yielded evidence of conformist changes from habitual techniques to alternatives displayed by a unanimous majority of others but implicating a form of quorum decision-making. Third, we found that between-group differences in social tolerance were associated with differential success in developing more complex tool use to exploit an increasingly inaccessible resource. We discuss the implications of this array of findings in the wider context of related studies of humans, other primates and non-primate species. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines

“…Recognizing this, but going far beyond it, articles in this issue address the significance of cases where collective knowledge exists only at the level of the collective, and not in any one individual. The partial or variant knowledge of different individuals that this implies may be distributed across a population in space, and/or over time, with subsequent combinations thence leading to innovations that can drive CCE [ 82 , 93 , 153 – 155 , 159 , 160 ]. Studies are progressively revealing that how these effects play out may be shaped by numerous interacting factors including the form of social structures and networks [ 93 , 159 , 160 ], relationships between individuals such as in degree of tolerance [ 153 ] or coordination [ 157 ], adaptive biases in model selection such as conformity [ 153 , 163 ], and the socio-cognitive capabilities of participant individuals, such as theory of mind [ 29 , 158 ] and inventiveness.…”

“…The partial or variant knowledge of different individuals that this implies may be distributed across a population in space, and/or over time, with subsequent combinations thence leading to innovations that can drive CCE [ 82 , 93 , 153 – 155 , 159 , 160 ]. Studies are progressively revealing that how these effects play out may be shaped by numerous interacting factors including the form of social structures and networks [ 93 , 159 , 160 ], relationships between individuals such as in degree of tolerance [ 153 ] or coordination [ 157 ], adaptive biases in model selection such as conformity [ 153 , 163 ], and the socio-cognitive capabilities of participant individuals, such as theory of mind [ 29 , 158 ] and inventiveness. The findings of the studies in this issue, alongside recent complementary explorations [ 91 , 162 , 164 ], provide a deepening understanding of the diverse manifestations of culture and its evolution in both natural and human-engineered contexts.…”

Collective minds: social network topology shapes collective cognition

“…[ 62 ]; Gruber et al . [ 63 ]; Whiten et al [ 64 ]; Wild et al . [ 65 ]; and Williams & Lachlan [ 66 ] in the present special issue), this manuscript particularly focuses on the role of network topology on collective cognitions in humans, leaving out the evolutionary framework.…”

Paradox of diversity in the collective brain

“…Transmission fidelity refers to the degree of information preservation during social learning and is therefore increased by better means of communication. Early genetically evolved and culture–gene coevolved improvements to transmission fidelity may have included joint attention and shared intentionality [ 25 , 26 ], theory of mind [ 27 ], social tolerance and prosociality [ 20 , 28 ], and sophisticated language [ 29 – 32 ]. Later culturally evolved improvements include information compression through heuristics and biases, easier learning through simplified steps, the discovery and spread of fundamental principles that support triangulation, and teaching.…”