scholarly journals Social information use and social information waste

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1828) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Morin ◽  
Pierre Olivier Jacquet ◽  
Krist Vaesen ◽  
Alberto Acerbi
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Human Adults ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Informational Resource

Social information is immensely valuable. Yet we waste it. The information we get from observing other humans and from communicating with them is a cheap and reliable informational resource. It is considered the backbone of human cultural evolution. Theories and models focused on the evolution of social learning show the great adaptive benefits of evolving cognitive tools to process it. In spite of this, human adults in the experimental literature use social information quite inefficiently: they do not take it sufficiently into account. A comprehensive review of the literature on five experimental tasks documented 45 studies showing social information waste, and four studies showing social information being over-used. These studies cover ‘egocentric discounting’ phenomena as studied by social psychology, but also include experimental social learning studies. Social information waste means that human adults fail to give social information its optimal weight. Both proximal explanations and accounts derived from evolutionary theory leave crucial aspects of the phenomenon unaccounted for: egocentric discounting is a pervasive effect that no single unifying explanation fully captures. Cultural evolutionary theory's insistence on the power and benefits of social influence is to be balanced against this phenomenon. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Foundations of cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals Social information use and social information waste

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Morin ◽  
Pierre O. Jacquet ◽  
Krist Vaesen ◽  
Alberto Acerbi
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Human Adults ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Informational Resource

Social information is immensely valuable. Yet we waste it. The information we get from observing other humans and from communicating with them is a cheap and reliable informational resource. It is considered the backbone of human cultural evolution. Theories and models focused on the evolution of social learning show the great adaptive benefits of evolving cognitive tools to process it. In spite of this, human adults in the experimental literature use social information quite inefficiently: they do not take it sufficiently into account. A comprehensive review of the literature on five experimental tasks documented 45 studies showing social information waste, and 4 studies showing social information being over-used. These studies cover “egocentric discounting” phenomena as studied by social psychology, but also include experimental social learning studies. Social information waste means that human adults fail to give social information its optimal weight. Both proximal explanations and accounts derived from evolutionary theory leave crucial aspects of the phenomenon unaccounted for: egocentric discounting is a pervasive effect that no single unifying explanation fully captures. Cultural evolutionary theory’s insistence on the power and benefits of social influence is to be balanced against this phenomenon.

scholarly journals Reproductive skew affects social information use

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 182084 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Smolla ◽  
Charlotte Rosher ◽  
R. Tucker Gilman ◽  
Susanne Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Reproductive Skew ◽  
The Other ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Social Information Use

Individuals vary in their propensity to use social learning, the engine of cultural evolution, to acquire information about their environment. The causes of those differences, however, remain largely unclear. Using an agent-based model, we tested the hypothesis that as a result of reproductive skew differences in energetic requirements for reproduction affect the value of social information. We found that social learning is associated with lower variance in yield and is more likely to evolve in risk-averse low-skew populations than in high-skew populations. Reproductive skew may also result in sex differences in social information use, as empirical data suggest that females are often more risk-averse than males. To explore how risk may affect sex differences in learning strategies, we simulated learning in sexually reproducing populations where one sex experiences more reproductive skew than the other. When both sexes compete for the same resources, they tend to adopt extreme strategies: the sex with greater reproductive skew approaches pure individual learning and the other approaches pure social learning. These results provide insight into the conditions that promote individual and species level variation in social learning and so may affect cultural evolution.

scholarly journals Reproductive skew affects social information use

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Smolla ◽  
Charlotte Rosher ◽  
R. Tucker Gilman ◽  
Susanne Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Reproductive Skew ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Simulated Learning ◽  
Social Information Use

Individuals vary in their propensity to use social learning, the engine of cultural evolution, to acquire information about their environment. The causes of those differences, however, remain largely unclear. Individuals that experience high reproductive skew are expected to favour high-risk strategies, whereas those that experience low reproductive skew are expected to favour risk-averse strategies. Using an agent-based model, we tested the hypothesis that differences in energetic requirements for reproduction affect the value of social information. We found that social learning is associated with lower variance in yield and is more likely to evolve in risk-averse low-skew populations than in high-skew populations. Reproductive skew may also result in sex differences in social information use, as females tend to be more risk averse than males. To explore how risk may affect sex differences in learning strategies, we simulated learning in sexually reproducing populations. Where both sexes share the same environment they adopt more extreme learning strategies, approaching pure individual or social learning. These results provide insight into the conditions that promote individual and species level variation in social learning and so may affect cultural evolution.

scholarly journals Higher frequency of social learning in China than in the West shows cultural variation in the dynamics of cultural evolution

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1798) ◽  
pp. 20142209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi ◽  
Lei Chang ◽  
Keelin Murray ◽  
Hui Jing Lu
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
British People

Cultural evolutionary models have identified a range of conditions under which social learning (copying others) is predicted to be adaptive relative to asocial learning (learning on one's own), particularly in humans where socially learned information can accumulate over successive generations. However, cultural evolution and behavioural economics experiments have consistently shown apparently maladaptive under-utilization of social information in Western populations. Here we provide experimental evidence of cultural variation in people's use of social learning, potentially explaining this mismatch. People in mainland China showed significantly more social learning than British people in an artefact-design task designed to assess the adaptiveness of social information use. People in Hong Kong, and Chinese immigrants in the UK, resembled British people in their social information use, suggesting a recent shift in these groups from social to asocial learning due to exposure to Western culture. Finally, Chinese mainland participants responded less than other participants to increased environmental change within the task. Our results suggest that learning strategies in humans are culturally variable and not genetically fixed, necessitating the study of the ‘social learning of social learning strategies' whereby the dynamics of cultural evolution are responsive to social processes, such as migration, education and globalization.

scholarly journals Pre- and post-natal stress have opposing effects on social information use

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 20121088 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neeltje J. Boogert ◽  
Cedric Zimmer ◽  
Karen A. Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Social Foraging ◽  
Short Term Exposure ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Food Conditions ◽  
Opposing Effects ◽  
Developmental Conditions

Theoretical models of social learning predict that animals should copy others in variable environments where resource availability is relatively unpredictable. Although short-term exposure to unpredictable conditions in adulthood has been shown to encourage social learning, virtually nothing is known concerning whether and how developmental conditions affect social information use. Unpredictable food availability increases levels of the stress hormone corticosterone (CORT). In birds, CORT can be transferred from the mother to her eggs, and have downstream behavioural effects. We tested how pre-natal CORT elevation through egg injection, and chick post-natal development in unpredictable food conditions, affected social information use in adult Japanese quail ( Coturnix japonica ). Pre-natal CORT exposure encouraged quail to copy the foraging decisions of demonstrators in video playbacks, whereas post-natal food unpredictability led individuals to avoid the demonstrated food source. An individual's exposure to stress and uncertainty during development can thus affect its use of social foraging information in adulthood. However, the stressor's nature and developmental timing determine whether an adult will tend to copy conspecifics or do the opposite. Developmental effects on social information use might thus help explain individual differences in social foraging tactics and leadership.

scholarly journals The evolution of social learning as phenotypic cue integration

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1828) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bram Kuijper ◽  
Olof Leimar ◽  
Peter Hammerstein ◽  
John M. McNamara ◽  
Sasha R. X. Dall
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
Cue Integration ◽  
Bet Hedging ◽  
Epigenetic Factors ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Fluctuating Environments ◽  
Selective Environment

Most analyses of the origins of cultural evolution focus on when and where social learning prevails over individual learning, overlooking the fact that there are other developmental inputs that influence phenotypic fit to the selective environment. This raises the question of how the presence of other cue ‘channels’ affects the scope for social learning. Here, we present a model that considers the simultaneous evolution of (i) multiple forms of social learning (involving vertical or horizontal learning based on either prestige or conformity biases) within the broader context of other evolving inputs on phenotype determination, including (ii) heritable epigenetic factors, (iii) individual learning, (iv) environmental and cascading maternal effects, (v) conservative bet-hedging, and (vi) genetic cues. In fluctuating environments that are autocorrelated (and hence predictable), we find that social learning from members of the same generation (horizontal social learning) explains the large majority of phenotypic variation, whereas other cues are much less important. Moreover, social learning based on prestige biases typically prevails in positively autocorrelated environments, whereas conformity biases prevail in negatively autocorrelated environments. Only when environments are unpredictable or horizontal social learning is characterized by an intrinsically low information content, other cues such as conservative bet-hedging or vertical prestige biases prevail. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Foundations of cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals Individual differences in learning behaviours in humans: Asocial exploration tendency does not predict reliance on social learning

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wataru Toyokawa ◽  
Yoshimatsu Saito ◽  
Tatsuya Kameda
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Exploration Exploitation

AbstractA number of empirical studies have suggested that individual differences in asocial exploration tendencies in animals may be related to those in social information use. However, because the ‘exploration tendency’ in most previous studies has been measured without considering the exploration-exploitation trade-off, it is yet hard to conclude that the animal asocial ‘exploration-exploitation’ tendency may be tied to social information use. Here, we studied human learning behaviour in both asocial and social multi-armed bandit tasks. By fitting reinforcement learning models including asocial and/or social decision processes, we measured each individual’s (1) asocial exploration tendency and (2) social information use. We found consistent individual differences in the exploration tendency in the asocial tasks. We also found substantive heterogeneity in the adopted learning strategies in the social task: One-third of participants were most likely to have used the copy-when-uncertain strategy, while the remaining two-thirds were most likely to have relied only on asocial learning. However, we found no significant individual association between the exploration frequency in the asocial task and the use of the social learning strategy in the social task. Our results suggest that the social learning strategies may be independent from the asocial search strategies in humans.

scholarly journals Social information use in adolescents: the impact of adults, peers and household composition

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Molleman ◽  
Patricia Kanngiesser ◽  
Wouter van den Bos
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Household Composition ◽  
Estimation Task ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Simple Estimation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Social Learning Strategies

Social learning strategies are key for making adaptive decisions, but their ontogeny remains poorly understood. The authors investigate how social information use depends on its source (adults vs. peer), and how it is shaped by adolescents’ household composition (extended vs. nuclear), a factor known to modulate social development. Using a simple estimation task, we show that social information strongly impacts adolescents’ (N=256) behaviour, especially when its source is an adult. However, social information use does not depend on household composition: the relative impact of adults and peers was similar in adolescents from both household types. Furthermore, adolescents were found to directly copy others’ estimates surprisingly frequently. This study provides novel insights into adolescents’ social information use and contributes to understanding the ontogeny of social learning strategies.

Experiential effects on mirror systems and social learning: Implications for social intelligence

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon M. Reader
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Associative Learning ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Developmental History ◽  
Optimal Response ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Experiential Effects

AbstractInvestigations of biases and experiential effects on social learning, social information use, and mirror systems can usefully inform one another. Unconstrained learning is predicted to shape mirror systems when the optimal response to an observed act varies, but constraints may emerge when immediate error-free responses are required and evolutionary or developmental history reliably predicts the optimal response. Given the power of associative learning, such constraints may be rare.

scholarly journals Social learning and the replication process: an experimental investigation

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1808) ◽  
pp. 20150719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxime Derex ◽  
Romain Feron ◽  
Bernard Godelle ◽  
Michel Raymond
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Fitness Landscape ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Replication Process ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
Observed Behaviour ◽  
Cultural Traits

Human cultural traits typically result from a gradual process that has been described as analogous to biological evolution. This observation has led pioneering scholars to draw inspiration from population genetics to develop a rigorous and successful theoretical framework of cultural evolution. Social learning, the mechanism allowing information to be transmitted between individuals, has thus been described as a simple replication mechanism. Although useful, the extent to which this idealization appropriately describes the actual social learning events has not been carefully assessed. Here, we used a specifically developed computer task to evaluate (i) the extent to which social learning leads to the replication of an observed behaviour and (ii) the consequences it has for fitness landscape exploration. Our results show that social learning does not lead to a dichotomous choice between disregarding and replicating social information. Rather, it appeared that individuals combine and transform information coming from multiple sources to produce new solutions. As a consequence, landscape exploration was promoted by the use of social information. These results invite us to rethink the way social learning is commonly modelled and could question the validity of predictions coming from models considering this process as replicative.

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