Cultural evolution and individual development of openness and conservatism

Abstract

We present a model of cultural evolution in which an individual's propensity to engage in social learning is affected by social learning itself. We assume that individuals observe cultural traits displayed by others and decide whether to copy them based on their overall preference for the displayed traits. Preferences, too, can be transmitted between individuals. Our results show that such cultural dynamics tends to produce conservative individuals, i.e., individuals who are reluctant to copy new traits. Openness to new information, however, can be maintained when individuals need significant time to acquire the cultural traits that make them effective cultural models. We show that a gradual enculturation of young individuals by many models and a larger cultural repertoire to be acquired are favorable circumstances for the long-term maintenance of openness in individuals and groups. Our results agree with data about lifetime personality change, showing that openness to new information decreases with age. Our results show that cultural remodeling of cultural transmission is a powerful force in cultural evolution, i.e., that cultural evolution can change its own dynamics. mathematical model ͉ personality ͉ social learning

Conformity cannot be identified based on population-level signatures

“…at time step = 0 all individuals were social learners, and at time step = 100 all were individual learners), and the decrease affected a proportion d ( d  = 0.1,0.2,0.3) of the population. This model condition corresponds to a habit formation/conservatism bias246465.…”

The Evolution of Individual and Cultural Variation in Social Learning

“…Ghirlanda and colleagues [79][80][81] showed that openness can be maintained but only when openness, and effectiveness as a 36 demonstrator, are determined by multiple traits, such that individuals must first remain open to learn 37 all of the traits needed to be effective demonstrators, before becoming conservative. Irrespective of 38 these particular conclusions, these models demonstrate that when the tendency to learn from others 39 can itself be learned from others, then cultural dynamics emerge that we would not expect if social 40 learning were genetically fixed and stable over the lifetime.…”

“…Formal 324 models are needed of these situations. The few models that have explicitly addressed the social 325 learning of social learning [79][80][81] confirm that novel dynamics can emerge that would not be 326 expected if learning strategies were genetically specified (Box 3). 327…”

Cultural Evolution: A Review of Theory, Findings and Controversies

“…On the other hand, given the known differences between the dynamics of genetic and cultural inheritance, this may not necessarily be the case. In subsequent models, Enquist and colleagues explored this further (Acerbi et al 2009;Ghirlanda et al 2006), showing that when the tendency to engage in social learning can itself be socially learned, this gradually reduces individuals' reliance on social information. This is because while social learners may learn from nonsocial learners to become non-social learners, the reverse is less likely: non-social learners do not learn from social learners because, by definition, they do not learn socially.…”