Cultural evolution in more than two dimensions: Distinguishing social learning biases and identifying payoff structures

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-92
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Learning Biases ◽  
Payoff Structure ◽  
Social Learning Biases

AbstractBentley et al.’s two-dimensional conceptual map is complementary to cultural evolution research that has sought to explain population-level cultural dynamics in terms of individual-level behavioral processes. Here, I qualify their scheme by arguing that different social learning biases should be treated distinctly, and that the transparency of decisions is sometimes conflated with the actual underlying payoff structure of those decisions.

scholarly journals Migration, acculturation, and the maintenance of between-group cultural variation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social Learning Processes

AbstractHow do migration and acculturation (i.e. psychological or behavioral change resulting from migration) affect within- and between-group cultural variation? Here I answer this question by drawing analogies between genetic and cultural evolution. Population genetic models show that migration rapidly breaks down between-group genetic structure. In cultural evolution, however, migrants or their descendants can acculturate to local behaviors via social learning processes such as conformity, potentially preventing migration from eliminating between-group cultural variation. An analysis of the empirical literature on migration suggests that acculturation is common, with second and subsequent migrant generations shifting, sometimes substantially, towards the cultural values of the adopted society. Yet there is little understanding of the individual-level dynamics that underlie these population-level shifts. To explore this formally, I present models quantifying the effect of migration and acculturation on between-group cultural variation, for both neutral and costly cooperative traits. In the models, between-group cultural variation, measured using F statistics, is eliminated by migration and maintained by conformist acculturation. The extent of acculturation is determined by the strength of conformist bias and the number of demonstrators from whom individuals learn. Acculturation is countered by assortation, the tendency for individuals to preferentially interact with culturally-similar others. Unlike neutral traits, cooperative traits can additionally be maintained by payoff-biased social learning, but only in the presence of strong sanctioning institutions. Overall, the models show that surprisingly little conformist acculturation is required to maintain realistic amounts of between-group cultural diversity. While these models provide insight into the potential dynamics of acculturation and migration in cultural evolution, they also highlight the need for more empirical research into the individual-level learning biases that underlie migrant acculturation.

scholarly journals Cultural evolution of emotional expression in 50 years of song lyrics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Olivia Brand ◽  
Alberto Acerbi ◽  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Statistical Modelling ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Learning Biases ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
Expression Of Emotions ◽  
And Migration ◽  
User Friendly

The cultural dynamics of music has recently become a popular avenue of research in the field of cultural evolution, reflecting a growing interest in art and popular culture more generally. Just as biologists seek to explain population-level trends in genetic evolution in terms of micro-evolutionary processes such as selection, drift and migration, cultural evolutionists have sought to explain population-level cultural phenomena in terms of underlying social, psychological and demographic factors. Primary amongst these factors are learning biases, describing how cultural items are socially transmitted from person to person. As big datasets become more openly available and workable, and statistical modelling techniques become more powerful, efficient and user-friendly, describing population-level dynamics in terms of simple, individual-level learning biases is becoming more feasible. Here we test for the presence of learning biases in two large datasets of popular song lyrics dating from 1965-2015. We find some evidence of content bias, prestige bias and success bias in the proliferation of negative lyrics, and suggest that negative expression of emotions in music, and perhaps art generally, provides an avenue for people to not only process and express their own negative emotions, but also benefit from the knowledge that prestigious others experience similarly negative emotions as they do.

scholarly journals Pay-off-biased social learning underlies the diffusion of novel extractive foraging traditions in a wild primate

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1856) ◽  
pp. 20170358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan J. Barrett ◽  
Richard L. McElreath ◽  
Susan E. Perry
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
Adaptive Behaviour ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Important Variation ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Innovation And Diffusion

The type and variety of learning strategies used by individuals to acquire behaviours in the wild are poorly understood, despite the presence of behavioural traditions in diverse taxa. Social learning strategies such as conformity can be broadly adaptive, but may also retard the spread of adaptive innovations. Strategies like pay-off-biased learning, by contrast, are effective at diffusing new behaviour but may perform poorly when adaptive behaviour is common. We present a field experiment in a wild primate, Cebus capucinus , that introduced a novel food item and documented the innovation and diffusion of successful extraction techniques. We develop a multilevel, Bayesian statistical analysis that allows us to quantify individual-level evidence for different social and individual learning strategies. We find that pay-off-biased and age-biased social learning are primarily responsible for the diffusion of new techniques. We find no evidence of conformity; instead rare techniques receive slightly increased attention. We also find substantial and important variation in individual learning strategies that is patterned by age, with younger individuals being more influenced by both social information and their own individual experience. The aggregate cultural dynamics in turn depend upon the variation in learning strategies and the age structure of the wild population.

scholarly journals PAYOFF-BIASED SOCIAL LEARNING UNDERLIES THE DIFFUSION OF NOVEL EXTRACTIVE FORAGING TRADITIONS IN A WILD PRIMATE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan J Barrett ◽  
Richard L McElreath ◽  
Susan E Perry
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
Adaptive Behaviour ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Important Variation ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Innovation And Diffusion

AbstractThe type and variety of learning strategies used by individuals to acquire behaviours in the wild are poorly understood, despite the presence of behavioural traditions in diverse taxa. Social learning strategies such as conformity can be broadly adaptive, but may also retard the spread of adaptive innovations. Strategies like payoff-biased learning, in contrast, are effective at diffusing new behaviour but may perform poorly when adaptive behaviour is common. We present a field experiment in a wild primate,Cebus capucinus, that introduced a novel food item and documented the innovation and diffusion of successful extraction techniques. We develop a multilevel, Bayesian statistical analysis that allows us to quantify individual-level evidence for different social and individual learning strategies. We find that payoff-biased social learning and age-biased social learning are primarily responsible for the diffusion of new techniques. We find no evidence of conformity; instead rare techniques receive slightly increased attention. We also find substantial and important variation in individual learning strategies that is patterned by age, with younger individuals being more influenced by both social information and their own individual experience. The aggregate cultural dynamics in turn depend upon the variation in learning strategies and the age structure of the wild population.

scholarly journals Cultural selection shapes network structure

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. eaaw0609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Smolla ◽  
Erol Akçay
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Level Structure ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Dense Networks ◽  
The Social

Cultural evolution relies on the social transmission of cultural traits along a population’s social network. Research indicates that network structure affects information spread and thus the capacity for cumulative culture. However, how network structure itself is driven by population-culture co-evolution remains largely unclear. We use a simple model to investigate how populations negotiate the trade-off between acquiring new skills and getting better at existing skills and how this trade-off shapes social networks. We find unexpected eco-evolutionary feedbacks from culture onto social networks and vice versa. We show that selecting for skill generalists results in sparse networks with diverse skill sets, whereas selecting for skill specialists results in dense networks and a population that specializes on the same few skills on which everyone is an expert. Our model advances our understanding of the complex feedbacks in cultural evolution and demonstrates how individual-level behavior can lead to the emergence of population-level structure.

Epigenetic and cultural evolution are non-Darwinian

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 371-371
Author(s):  
Liane Gabora
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Self Assembly ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Early Evolution ◽  
Epigenetic Change ◽  
Assembly Code ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Distinct Role

AbstractThe argument that heritable epigenetic change plays a distinct role in evolution would be strengthened through recognition that it is what bootstrapped the origin and early evolution of life, and that, like behavioral and symbolic change, it is non-Darwinian. The mathematics of natural selection, a population-level process, is limited to replication with negligible individual-level change that uses a self-assembly code.

scholarly journals Content bias in the cultural evolution of house finch song

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mason Youngblood ◽  
David Lahti
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Population Level ◽  
R Package ◽  
House Finch ◽  
Population Declines ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Transmission Mechanisms ◽  
Content Bias ◽  
Approximate Bayesian

In this study, we used a longitudinal dataset of house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus) song recordings spanning four decades in the introduced eastern range to assess how individual-level cultural transmission mechanisms drive population-level changes in birdsong. First, we developed an agent-based model (available as a new R package called TransmissionBias) that simulates the cultural transmission of house finch song given different parameters related to transmission biases, or biases in social learning that modify the probability of adoption of particular cultural variants. Next, we used approximate Bayesian computation and machine learning to estimate what parameter values likely generated the temporal changes in diversity in our observed data. We found evidence that strong content bias, likely targeted towards syllable complexity, plays a central role in the cultural evolution of house finch song in western Long Island. Frequency and demonstrator biases appear to be neutral or absent. Additionally, we estimated that house finch song is transmitted with extremely high fidelity. Future studies should use our simulation framework to better understand how cultural transmission and population declines influence song diversity in wild populations.

Cultural selection and biased transformation: two dynamics of cultural evolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1828) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Population Level ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Selection ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Directional Change

Here, I discuss two broad versions of human cultural evolution which currently exist in the literature and which emphasize different underlying dynamics. One, which originates in population-genetic-style modelling, emphasizes how cultural selection causes some cultural variants to be favoured and gradually increase in frequency over others. The other, which draws more from cognitive science, holds that cultural change is driven by the biased transformation of cultural variants by individuals in non-random and consistent directions. Despite claims that cultural evolution is characterized by one or the other of these dynamics, these are neither mutually exclusive nor a dichotomy. Different domains of human culture are likely to be more or less strongly weighted towards cultural selection or biased transformation. Identifying cultural dynamics in real-world cultural data is challenging given that they can generate the same population-level patterns, such as directional change or cross-cultural stability, and the same cognitive and emotional mechanisms may underlie both cultural selection and biased transformation. Nevertheless, fine-grained historical analysis and laboratory experiments, combined with formal models to generate quantitative predictions, offer the best way of distinguishing them. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Foundations of cultural evolution’.

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