Modeling nonhuman conventions: the behavioral ecology of arbitrary action

The experimental emergence of convention in a non-human primate

“…Conventions form an essential part of human social and cultural behaviour and may also be important to other animals. Yet we know surprisingly little about non-human conventions beyond a few rare examples (see Stephens & Heinen, 2018 for a discussion of non-human conventions). The purpose of this article is to discuss and review the literature on conventions in non-human primates to provide a background against which human conventions have evolved (Kappeler, Fichtel, & van Schaik, 2019) and then to present a succession of experiments showing the emergence of convention in a non-human primate using a unique novel experimental system.…”

“…In the framework of game theory (Deming, Neumann, & Morgenstern, 1944), a coordination problem is a problem with multiple Nash equilibria (a strategy is a Nash equilibrium when no player can do better by changing his strategy alone; (Nash, 1951)) and a convention is a stable solution to such problem (see Lewis (1969) for the original discussion and Stephens and Heinen (2018) for a more detailed discussion in the context of animal behaviour). Equilibrium selection, the stable solution that is adopted, is governed by initial conditions and dynamics (influenced by the way individuals choose to act and the environment).…”

“…Conventions have often been overlooked in the literature on social learning despite the fact that they form an essential part of human social and cultural behaviour [1] and may also be important to other animal societies. Only a few rare examples of non-human conventions have been documented (see [2] for a discussion of non-human conventions), despite the existence of evolutionary precursors [3]. The first part of this article discusses current evidence of conventions in non-human primates and concludes that conventions ought to be more frequently observed.…”

“…In the framework of game theory [15], a coordination problem is a problem with multiple Nash equilibriums (a strategy is a Nash equilibrium when no player can do better by changing his strategy alone; [16]) and a convention is a Nash equilibrium to such problem (see [4] for the original discussion and [2] for a more detailed discussion in the context of animal behaviour). The Nash equilibrium, i.e.…”

“…Conventions are usually associated with three important properties [6] Conventions are the natural outcome of individuals repeatedly facing coordination problems together and are therefore expected in group-living animals and especially in tightly bonded non-human primates (for instance, see [18] for a study of chimpanzees solving a coordination task using touchscreens). Recently, Stephens et al [19] reviewed evidence of conventions in non-human animals using a game-theoretic perspective but did not discuss primates, and Kappeler et al [3] provided an important analysis of the evolutionary behavioural, emotional and cognitive precursors of norms and conventions in non-human primates. Here, we complement this work by discussing specific cases of non-human primate behaviour in the context just discussed that is graded and grounded in a game-theoretic perspective.…”