Personality predicts innovation and social learning in children: Implications for cultural evolution

Abstract

Innovation and social learning are the pillars of cultural evolution, allowing cultural behaviours to cumulatively advance over generations. Yet, little is known about individual differences in the use of social and asocial information. We examined whether personality influenced 7-11-year-old children's (N = 282) propensity to elect to observe others first or independently generate solutions to novel problems. Conscientiousness was associated with electing for no demonstrations, while agreeableness was associated with opting for demonstrations. For children receiving demonstrations, openness to experience consistently predicted deviation from observed methods. Children who opted for no demonstrations were also more likely than those opting for demonstrations to exhibit tool manufacture on an innovation challenge and displayed higher creativity, as measured by an alternate uses task. These results highlight how new cultural traditions emerge, establish and advance by identifying which individuals generate new cultural variants in populations and which are influential in the diffusion of these variants, and help reduce the apparent tension within the 'ratchet' of cumulative culture.

Face-to-face learning enhances the social transmission of information

“…If high autistic traits are simultaneously related to better VPT and worse SPT, then this could lead to a null result. While we did not find them here, there is evidence of individual differences in personality that do modify observational learning [23].…”

“…Based on studies of observational learning in nonhuman primates and young children [22], we employed a puzzle box. Puzzle boxes are complex visuospatial tasks that, although artificial, are ecologically relevant as they capture individual differences in the social transmission of learning [23]. We utilized a type of puzzle box known as an artificial fruit box because they are analogous to a fruit that one must learn to open.…”

After a decade of tool innovation, what comes next?

“…Infants also show fixedness in tool use (without needing to modify them): Middle‐class, predominantly White U.S. 12‐ to 18‐month‐olds found it difficult to use the handle end of a spoon to illuminate a lightbox, but when the tool was novel (but still spoon shaped), they showed more flexibility (Barrett et al, 2007), suggesting that flexibly using novel tools may be easier than using familiar ones. Regarding the latter, if offered the choice of solving novel problems themselves (through innovation) or watching demonstrations first, most working‐ and middle‐class, predominantly White U.K. children chose the demonstrations (Flynn et al, 2016; Rawlings, Flynn, et al, 2021). Those who chose to solve tasks themselves showed greater tool innovation than those who chose to observe demonstrations (Rawlings, Flynn, et al, 2021).…”

“…Regarding the latter, if offered the choice of solving novel problems themselves (through innovation) or watching demonstrations first, most working‐ and middle‐class, predominantly White U.K. children chose the demonstrations (Flynn et al, 2016; Rawlings, Flynn, et al, 2021). Those who chose to solve tasks themselves showed greater tool innovation than those who chose to observe demonstrations (Rawlings, Flynn, et al, 2021). This proclivity for observing others over innovating solutions may impede opportunities for acquiring innovative skills (Rawlings, Flynn, et al, 2021).…”

Young children spontaneously invent three different types of associative tool use behaviour

“…While in the meantime a number of studies on the origins and development of simple tool use, tool making and tool innovation in children has been conducted (Barrett et al, 2007;E. Bates et al, 1980;Bechtel et al, 2013;Breyel & Pauen, 2021;Brown, 1990;Chappell et al, 2013;Chen et al, 2000;Deák, 2014;Gönül et al, 2018;Keen, 2010;Lew-Levy et al, 2021;McCarty et al, 1999McCarty et al, , 2001Neldner et al, 2020;Pauen & Bechtel-Kuehne, 2016;Piaget, 1952;Rat-Fischer et al, 2012;Rawlings et al, 2021;Reindl et al, 2016;Voigt et al, 2019;Willatts, 1984), there are only few studies on associative tool use Associative Tool Use in Preschool Children in children, and all of them focus on only one type: Sequential tool use (Alpert, 1928;Matheson, 1931;Metevier, 2006). Köhler (1921) remarked that most tool-use behaviours in adults have become "mechanized", i.e., are carried out with ease and so questions about their ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins might not present themselves as very salient.…”