The evolutionary basis of human social learning

Morgan, Thomas J. H.; Rendell, Luke; Ehn, Micael; Hoppitt, William; Laland, Kevin N.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.1172

Cited by 283 publications

(376 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…The reasoning behind this criterion is that individuals who would copy the majority increasingly, but not to a disproportionate extent, could similarly copy any individual in the population randomly, thus without any selective majority considerations (see Henrich & Boyd, 1998;van Leeuwen & Haun, 2013;Mesoudi, 2009). One recent study on human adults' decision-making processes integrated this mathematical criterion into their analyses and found a substantial part of the subjects to be majority biased (Morgan, Rendell, Ehn, Hoppitt, & Laland, 2012). However, while this study impressively shows that humans rely on increasingly large majorities in the face of uncertain contingencies (which strategy leads to the highest rewards?…”

Section: Human Conformity Revisitedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conformity without majority? The case for demarcating social from majority influences

Leeuwen

Haun

2014

Animal Behaviour

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Keywords: conformity decision making frequency-dependent learning majority influence nonhuman animals social learningIn this review, we explore the extent to which the recent evidence for conformity in nonhuman animals may alternatively be explained by the animals' preference for social information regardless of the number of individuals demonstrating the respective behaviour. Conformity as a research topic originated in human psychology and has been described as the phenomenon in which individuals change their behaviour to match the behaviour displayed by the majority of group members. Recent studies have aimed to investigate the same process in nonhuman animals; however, most of the adopted designs have not been able to control for social influences independent of any majority influence and some studies have not even incorporated a majority in their designs. This begs the question to what extent the 'conformity interpretation' is preliminary and should be revisited in light of animals' general susceptibility to social influences. Similarly, demarcating social from majority influences sheds new light on the original findings in human psychology and motivates reinterpretation of the reported behavioural patterns in terms of social instead of majority influences. Conformity can have profound ramifications for individual fitness and group dynamics; identifying the exact source responsible for animals' behavioural adjustments is essential for understanding animals' learning biases and interpreting cross-species data in terms of evolutionary processes.

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Section: Human Conformity Revisitedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conformity without majority? The case for demarcating social from majority influences

Leeuwen

Haun

2014

Animal Behaviour

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“…Subsequent experiments have shown that people employ both of these social learning strategies, as predicted, but that payoff bias is typically preferred to conformity. McElreath et al (2008) found this using a simple two-option task of planting wheat or potatoes where one gave higher yields, Morgan et al (2011) using various tasks including mental rotation and perceptual judgements, and Mesoudi (2011b) using a more complex artifactdesign task. In each of these, participants could employ trial-and-error asocial learning, or use some form of social learning.…”

Section: Social Learning Is Payoff-biased and Conformistmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Evolution: A Review of Theory, Findings and Controversies

2015

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The last two decades have seen an explosion in research analysing cultural change as a Darwinian evolutionary process. Here I provide an overview of the theory of cultural evolution, including its intellectual history, major theoretical tenets and methods, key findings, and prominent criticisms and controversies. 'Culture' is defined as socially transmitted information. Cultural evolution is the theory that this socially transmitted information evolves in the manner laid out by Darwin in The Origin of Species, i.e. it comprises a system of variation, differential fitness and inheritance. Cultural evolution is not, however, neo-Darwinian, in that many of the details of genetic evolution may not apply, such as particulate inheritance and random mutation. Following a brief history of this idea, I review theoretical and empirical studies of cultural microevolution, which entails both selection-like processes wherein some cultural variants are more likely to be acquired and transmitted than others, plus transformative processes that alter cultural information during transmission. I also review how phylogenetic methods have been used to reconstruct cultural macroevolution, including the evolution of languages, technology and social organisation. Finally, I discuss recent controversies and debates, including the extent to which culture is proximate or ultimate, the relative role of selective and transformative processes in cultural evolution, the basis of cumulative cultural evolution, the evolution of large-scale human cooperation, and whether social learning is learned or innate. I conclude by highlighting the value of using evolutionary methods to study culture for both the social and biological sciences.

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“…Environmental cues frequently covary with biologically meaningful features and consequently often serve as a potent source of information [4]: an odour can predict the presence of food, or the rustling of leaves can predict the presence of a predator, etc. A further reduction of uncertainty may be achieved by incorporating social cues into the decision-making process [4,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. It has been suggested that by pooling imperfect estimations, groups may achieve increased decision accuracy, the so-called wisdom of crowds [16][17][18][19][20][21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decision accuracy in complex environments is often maximized by small group sizes

2014

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Individuals in groups, whether composed of humans or other animal species, often make important decisions collectively, including avoiding predators, selecting a direction in which to migrate and electing political leaders. Theoretical and empirical work suggests that collective decisions can be more accurate than individual decisions, a phenomenon known as the 'wisdom of crowds'. In these previous studies, it has been assumed that individuals make independent estimates based on a single environmental cue. In the real world, however, most cues exhibit some spatial and temporal correlation, and consequently, the sensory information that near neighbours detect will also be, to some degree, correlated. Furthermore, it may be rare for an environment to contain only a single informative cue, with multiple cues being the norm. We demonstrate, using two simple models, that taking this natural complexity into account considerably alters the relationship between group size and decision-making accuracy. In only a minority of environments do we observe the typical wisdom of crowds phenomenon (whereby collective accuracy increases monotonically with group size). When the wisdom of crowds is not observed, we find that a finite, and often small, group size maximizes decision accuracy. We reveal that, counterintuitively, it is the noise inherent in these small groups that enhances their accuracy, allowing individuals in such groups to avoid the detrimental effects of correlated information while exploiting the benefits of collective decision-making. Our results demonstrate that the conventional view of the wisdom of crowds may not be informative in complex and realistic environments, and that being in small groups can maximize decision accuracy across many contexts.

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The evolutionary basis of human social learning

Cited by 283 publications

References 58 publications

Conformity without majority? The case for demarcating social from majority influences

Conformity without majority? The case for demarcating social from majority influences

Cultural Evolution: A Review of Theory, Findings and Controversies

Decision accuracy in complex environments is often maximized by small group sizes

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