The Evolution of Individual and Cultural Variation in Social Learning

Mesoudi, Alex; Chang, Lei; Dall, Sasha R. X.; Thornton, Alex

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2015.12.012

Cited by 176 publications

(203 citation statements)

References 98 publications

(116 reference statements)

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“…More generally, our conclusion is consistent with the idea that natural selection will favour social learning mechanisms that are adaptive [5,10,20,71,72]. Major tasks for the future are to determine how and why individuals use different learning mechanisms in different situations [18,[73][74][75][76], what explains individual variation in the use of social learning mechanisms [77][78][79][80] and how the behaviour of those being copied will evolve [12].…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Social learning and the demise of costly cooperation in humans

2017

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Humans have a sophisticated ability to learn from others, termed social learning, which has allowed us to spread over the planet, construct complex societies, and travel to the moon. It has been hypothesized that social learning has played a pivotal role in making human societies cooperative, by favouring cooperation even when it is not favoured by genetical selection. However, this hypothesis lacks direct experimental testing, and the opposite prediction has also been made, that social learning disfavours cooperation. We experimentally tested how different aspects of social learning affect the level of cooperation in public-goods games. We found that: (i) social information never increased cooperation and usually led to decreased cooperation; (ii) cooperation was lowest when individuals could observe how successful individuals behaved; and (iii) cooperation declined because individuals preferred to copy successful individuals, who cooperated less, rather than copy common behaviours. Overall, these results suggest that individuals use social information to try and improve their own success, and that this can lead to lower levels of cooperation.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Social learning and the demise of costly cooperation in humans

2017

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“…Initial claims derived from self-reports that cultural transmission is largely vertical have been replaced with a two-stage model in which parental knowledge is updated via horizontal or oblique transmission, often targeted in age-or skillappropriate ways (76,77). The common modeling assumption that social learning is under fixed genetic control is incompatible with experimental evidence of substantial individual and cultural variation, and is being revised (93). The "demographic turn" within archaeology, itself an improvement on unrealistic "single genetic mutation" explanations for increases in past cultural complexity, has been refined to focus on population density and migration rather than just population size (49).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Individual variation in social learning is found in many species. It can be viewed on a continuum of phenotypic plasticity, from genetically polymorphic and developmentally fixed individual differences, to developmentally determined facultative responses to external environments or physiological state, to the associative learning of learning strategies (93). Whether individual variation in human social learning is nonadaptive noise, reflects frequency-dependent equilibria between information producers and scroungers with no grouplevel benefit (32), or is adaptive at the group level by maintaining a mix of innovation and tradition is unknown.…”

Section: Recent Research Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cultural variation in human social learning suggests that we acquire norms via social learning that, in turn, affect our degree of social learning (93). This process may generate cultural dynamics entailing the "social learning of social learning" (94), rather than the typical modeling assumption that learning strategies are genetically inherited.…”

Section: Recent Research Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pursuing Darwin’s curious parallel: Prospects for a science of cultural evolution

Mesoudi

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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In the past few decades, scholars from several disciplines have pursued the curious parallel noted by Darwin between the genetic evolution of species and the cultural evolution of beliefs, skills, knowledge, languages, institutions, and other forms of socially transmitted information. Here, I review current progress in the pursuit of an evolutionary science of culture that is grounded in both biological and evolutionary theory, but also treats culture as more than a proximate mechanism that is directly controlled by genes. Both genetic and cultural evolution can be described as systems of inherited variation that change over time in response to processes such as selection, migration, and drift. Appropriate differences between genetic and cultural change are taken seriously, such as the possibility in the latter of nonrandomly guided variation or transformation, blending inheritance, and one-to-many transmission. The foundation of cultural evolution was laid in the late 20th century with population-genetic style models of cultural microevolution, and the use of phylogenetic methods to reconstruct cultural macroevolution. Since then, there have been major efforts to understand the sociocognitive mechanisms underlying cumulative cultural evolution, the consequences of demography on cultural evolution, the empirical validity of assumed social learning biases, the relative role of transformative and selective processes, and the use of quantitative phylogenetic and multilevel selection models to understand past and present dynamics of society-level change. I conclude by highlighting the interdisciplinary challenges of studying cultural evolution, including its relation to the traditional social sciences and humanities. cultural evolution | cumulative culture | gene-culture coevolution | human evolution | social learningThe formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel. . . Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, p 90T his quote from Charles Darwin (1) draws a parallel between, on the one hand, the genetic evolution of species, and on the other, cultural change (i.e., changes in socially learned information, such as beliefs, knowledge, tools, technology, attitudes, norms, and, as Darwin mentions, languages). This idea is the basic premise of cultural evolution: Cultural change constitutes a Darwinian evolutionary process that shares key characteristics with the genetic evolution of species. The emergence of this second evolutionary process saw an unprecedented extension of genetic evolution by allowing organisms to adapt more rapidly to, and more powerfully create and shape, their environments.Since the 1980s, this parallel between genetic and cultural evolution has been pursued by scholars from a range of disciplines across the social, behavioral, and biological sciences. In this article, I review the current state of this interdisciplinary effort, focusing on topics of major recent research interest. No new theories...

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“…Nevertheless, caution should be applied when predicting how social learning may assist or hinder wildlife adaptation to change as there may be anthropogenic (Donaldson et al, 2012), ecological, cognitive (Greggor et al, 2014), or cultural (Whitehead, 2010) interactions and constraints in play. There is also evidence for individual variation in social learning within species and a continuum of phenotypic plasticity (i.e., a range of ways in which the genes can manifest in different environments) has been suggested (Mesoudi et al, 2016).…”

Section: Retaining Cultural Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine Mammal Behavior: A Review of Conservation Implications

Brakes

Dall

2016

Front. Mar. Sci.

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The three orders which comprise the extant marine mammals exhibit a wide range of behaviors, varying social structures, and differences in social information use. Human impacts on marine mammals and their environments are ubiquitous; from chemical and noise pollution, to marine debris, prey depletion, and ocean acidification. As a result, no marine mammal populations remain entirely unaffected by human activities. Conservation may be hindered by an inadequate understanding of the behavioral ecology of some of these species. As a result of social structure, social information use, culture, and even behavioral syndromes, marine mammal social groups, and populations can be behaviorally heterogeneous. As a result responses to conservation initiatives, or exploitation, may be complex to predict. Previous commentators have highlighted the importance of incorporating behavioral data into conservation management and we review these considerations in light of the emerging science in this field for marine mammals. Since behavioral canalization may lead to vulnerability, whereas behavioral plasticity may provide opportunity for resilience, we argue that for many of these socially complex, cognitive species understanding their behavioral ecology, capacity for social learning, and individual behavioral variation, may be a central tenant for their successful conservation.

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The Evolution of Individual and Cultural Variation in Social Learning

Cited by 176 publications

References 98 publications

Social learning and the demise of costly cooperation in humans

Social learning and the demise of costly cooperation in humans

Pursuing Darwin’s curious parallel: Prospects for a science of cultural evolution

Marine Mammal Behavior: A Review of Conservation Implications

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