scholarly journals Prestige Does Not Affect the Cultural Transmission of Novel Controversial Arguments in an Online Transmission Chain Experiment

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 238-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ángel V. Jiménez ◽  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Transmission Chain ◽  
Reliable Effect ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Relevant Domain ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
High Prestige ◽  
The Prestige

Abstract Cultural evolutionary theories define prestige as social rank that is freely conferred on individuals possessing superior knowledge or skill, in order to gain opportunities to learn from such individuals. Consequently, information provided by prestigious individuals should be more memorable, and hence more likely to be culturally transmitted, than information from non-prestigious sources, particularly for novel, controversial arguments about which preexisting opinions are absent or weak. It has also been argued that this effect extends beyond the prestigious individual’s relevant domain of expertise. We tested whether the prestige and relevance of the sources of novel, controversial arguments affected the transmission of those arguments, independently of their content. In a four-generation linear transmission chain experiment, British participants (N = 192) recruited online read two conflicting arguments in favour of or against the replacement of textbooks by computer tablets in schools. Each of the two conflicting arguments was associated with one of three sources with different levels of prestige and relevance (high prestige, high relevance; high prestige, low relevance; low prestige, low relevance). Participants recalled the pro-tablets and anti-tablets arguments associated with each source and their recall was then passed to the next participant within their chain. Contrary to our predictions, we did not find a reliable effect of either the prestige or relevance of the sources of information on transmission fidelity. We discuss whether the lack of a reliable effect of prestige on recall might be a consequence of differences between how prestige operates in this experiment and in everyday life.

Prestige does not affect the cultural transmission of novel controversial arguments in an online transmission chain experiment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ángel V. Jiménez ◽  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Transmission Chain ◽  
Reliable Effect ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Relevant Domain ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
High Prestige ◽  
The Prestige

Cultural evolutionary theories define prestige as social rank that is freely conferred on individuals possessing superior knowledge or skill, in order to gain opportunities to learn from such individuals. Consequently, information provided by prestigious individuals should be more memorable, and hence more likely to be culturally transmitted, than information from non-prestigious sources, particularly for novel, controversial arguments about which pre-existing opinions are absent or weak. It has also been argued that this effect extends beyond the prestigious individual’s relevant domain of expertise. We tested whether the prestige and relevance of the sources of novel, controversial arguments affected the transmission of those arguments, independently of their content. In a four-generation linear transmission chain experiment, British participants (N=192) recruited online read two conflicting arguments in favour of or against the replacement of textbooks by computer tablets in schools. Each of the two conflicting arguments was associated with one of three sources with different levels of prestige and relevance (high prestige, high relevance; high prestige, low relevance; low prestige, low relevance). Participants recalled the pro-tablets and anti-tablets arguments associated with each source and their recall was then passed to the next participant within their chain. Contrary to our predictions, we did not find a reliable effect of either the prestige or relevance of the sources of information on transmission fidelity. We discuss whether the lack of a reliable effect of prestige on recall might be a consequence of differences between how prestige operates in this experiment and in everyday life.

scholarly journals The Cultural Transmission of Prestige and Dominance Social Rank Cues: an Experimental Simulation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ángel V. Jiménez ◽  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Experimental Simulation ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Transmission Chain ◽  
The Social ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Benefits And Costs

Abstract Informal social hierarchies within small human groups are argued to be based on prestige, dominance, or a combination of the two (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Prestige-based hierarchies entail the ordering of individuals by the admiration and respect they receive from others due to their competence within valued domains. This type of hierarchy provides benefits for subordinates such as social learning opportunities and both private and public goods. In contrast, dominance-based hierarchies entail the ordering of individuals by their capacity to win fights, and coerce or intimidate others. This type of hierarchy produces costs in subordinates due to its aggressive and intimidating nature. Given the benefits and costs associated with these types of social hierarchies for subordinates, we hypothesised that prestige and dominance cues are better recalled and transmitted than social rank cues that do not elicit high prestige or dominance associations (i.e. medium social rank cues). Assuming that for the majority of the population who are not already at the top of the social hierarchy it is more important to avoid the costs of dominance-based hierarchies than to obtain the benefits of prestige-based hierarchies, we further hypothesised that dominance cues are better transmitted than prestige cues. We conducted a recall-based transmission chain experiment with 30 chains of four generations each (N = 120). Participants read and recalled descriptions of prestigious, dominant, and medium social rank footballers, and their recall was passed to the next participant within their chain. As predicted, we found that both prestige cues and dominance cues were better transmitted than medium social rank cues. However, we did not find support for our prediction of the better transmission of dominance cues than prestige cues. We discuss whether the results might be explained by a specific social-rank content transmission bias or by a more general emotional content transmission bias.

scholarly journals Random Drift and Design Creativity: Evolution of Drawings in the Laboratory

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-27
Author(s):  
Minoru Matsui ◽  
Kenta Ono ◽  
Makoto Watanabe
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Random Drift ◽  
Design Creativity ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Transmission Chain ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Real World Datasets ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary

Previous cultural evolutionary analyses argue that random-copying model that is analogous to genetic drift in population genetics explains a variety of real-world datasets. Few empirical investigations have been done on how cultural traits are actually generated and selected. We present experimental data that matches random-copying simulation very well. In our experiment, designers copied what they considered well designed, and eliminated the poor ones, and designed several novel drawings by different design strategies in a cultural transmission chain. What were conventionally thought useful for designers to produce designs that prosper, such as practice, exposure to other design and experience in design, do not quite contribute to its prosperity. We suggest that some design’s creation processes as well as its market may be value-neutral.

scholarly journals An Experimental Simulation of the Cultural Transmission of Prestige and Dominance Social Rank Cues

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ángel V. Jiménez ◽  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Experimental Simulation ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Transmission Chain ◽  
The Social ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Benefits And Costs

Informal social hierarchies within small human groups are argued to be based on prestige, dominance, or a combination of these two (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Prestige-based hierarchies entail the ordering of individuals by the level of admiration and respect they receive from others due to their competence within valued domains. This type of hierarchy provides benefits for subordinates such as high-quality social learning opportunities and both private and public goods. In contrast, dominance-based hierarchies entail the ordering of individuals by their capacity to win fights, coerce and intimidate others. This type of hierarchy produces costs in subordinates due to its aggressive and intimidating nature. Given the benefits and costs associated with these types of social hierarchies for subordinates, we hypothesized that prestige and dominance cues are better recalled and transmitted than social rank cues that do not elicit high prestige or dominance associations (here medium social rank cues). Assuming that for the majority of the population who are not already at the top of the social hierarchy it is more important to avoid the costs of dominance-based hierarchies than to obtain the benefits of prestige-based hierarchies, we hypothesized that dominance cues are better transmitted than prestige cues. We conducted a recall-based transmission chain experiment with 30 chains of four generations each (N=120). Participants read and recalled three descriptions of prestigious, dominant and medium social rank footballers, and their recall was then passed to the next participant within their chain. As predicted, we found that both prestige cues and dominance cues were better transmitted than medium social rank cues. However, we did not find support for our prediction of the better transmission of dominance cues over prestige cues. We discuss whether the results might be explain by a specific social-rank content transmission bias or by a more general emotional content transmission bias.

scholarly journals From storytelling to Facebook. Content biases when retelling or sharing a story

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Acerbi
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
Oral Storytelling ◽  
Oral Transmission ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Transmission Chain ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Content Information

Cultural evolution researchers use transmission chain experiments to investigate which content is more likely to survive when transmitted from one individual to another. These experiments resemble oral storytelling, where individuals need to understand, memorise, and reproduce the content. However, prominent contemporary forms of cultural transmission—think an online sharing— only involve the willingness to transmit the content. Here I present two fully preregistered online experiments that explicitly investigated the differences between these two modalities of transmission. The first experiment (N=1080) examined whether negative content, information eliciting disgust, and threat-related information were better transmitted than their neutral counterpart in a traditional transmission chain set-up. The second experiment (N=1200), used the same material, but participants were asked whether they would share or not the content in two conditions: in a large anonymous social network, or with their friends, in their favourite social network. Negative content was both better transmitted in transmission chain experiments and shared more than its neutral counterpart. Threat-related information was successful in transmission chain experiments but not when sharing, and, finally, information eliciting disgust was not advantaged in either. Overall, the results present a composite picture, suggesting that the interactions between the specific content and the medium of transmission are important and, possibly, that content biases are stronger when memorisation and reproduction are involved in the transmission—like in oral transmission—than when they are not—like in online sharing.

scholarly journals Evolutionary dynamics of culturally transmitted, fertility-reducing traits

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1925) ◽  
pp. 20192468
Author(s):  
Dominik Wodarz ◽  
Shaun Stipp ◽  
David Hirshleifer ◽  
Natalia L. Komarova
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Demographic Transitions ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Fertility Traits

Human populations in many countries have undergone a phase of demographic transition, characterized by a major reduction in fertility at a time of increased resource availability. A key stylized fact is that the reduction in fertility is preceded by a reduction in mortality and a consequent increase in population density. Various theories have been proposed to account for the demographic transition process, including maladaptation, increased parental investment in fewer offspring, and cultural evolution. None of these approaches, including formal cultural evolutionary models of the demographic transitions, have addressed a possible direct causal relationship between a reduction in mortality and the subsequent decline in fertility. We provide mathematical models in which low mortality favours the cultural selection of low-fertility traits. This occurs because reduced mortality slows turnover in the model, which allows the cultural transmission advantage of low-fertility traits to outrace their reproductive disadvantage. For mortality to be a crucial determinant of outcome, a cultural transmission bias is required where slow reproducers exert higher social influence. Computer simulations of our models that allow for exogenous variation in the death rate can reproduce the central features of the demographic transition process, including substantial reductions in fertility within only one to three generations. A model assuming continuous evolution of reproduction rates through imitation errors predicts fertility to fall below replacement levels if death rates are sufficiently low. This can potentially explain the very low preferred family sizes in Western Europe.

Perceptions of Occupational Structure and Career Aspirations among the Future Turkish Elite

1977 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-338
Author(s):  
Vincent Tinto
Keyword(s):  
Social Systems ◽  
Career Aspirations ◽  
Occupational Structure ◽  
Occupational Roles ◽  
Basic Set ◽  
The Future ◽  
Functional Problems ◽  
Do So ◽  
High Prestige ◽  
The Prestige

Among recent studies of occupational stratification there appears to be a consensus that occupational categories are, with minor variations, similarly evaluated in terms of prestige by individuals of different societies.Is argued that all societies, faced with similar functional problems in the maintenance of complex social systems, find it necessary to ensure that certain types of occupational roles (e.g., political, religious, educational) are filled and their associated tasks performed. To do so, all societies allocate rewards (both material and sociopsychological) to these roles and positions within roles in the form of high prestige. Assuming that all societies have to fill the same basic set of occupational roles, it follows that all societies should exhibit generally similar prestige evaluations of these roles, as measured, for example, by the prestige attributed to the roles by individuals within the society.

scholarly journals The emergence of word-internal repetition through iterated learning: Explaining the mismatch between learning biases and language design

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitsuhiko Ota ◽  
Aitor San José ◽  
Kenny Smith
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Language Design ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Learning Biases ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Iterated Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary

The idea that natural language is shaped by biases in learning plays a key role in our understanding of how human language is structured, but its corollary that there should be a correspondence between typological generalisations and ease of acquisition is not always supported. For example, natural languages tend to avoid close repetitions of consonants within a word, but developmental evidence suggests that, if anything, words containing sound repetitions are more, not less, likely to be acquired than those without. In this study, we use word-internal repetition as a test case to provide a cultural evolutionary explanation of when and how learning biases impact on language design. Two artificial language experiments showed that adult speakers possess a bias for both consonant and vowel repetitions when learning novel words, but the effects of this bias were observable in language transmission only when there was a relatively high learning pressure on the lexicon. Based on these results, we argue that whether the design of a language reflects biases in learning depends on the relative strength of pressures from learnability and communication efficiency exerted on the linguistic system during cultural transmission.

scholarly journals Increasing the prestige of local self-government bodies and the effectiveness of activities should begin in the process of studying at the university

2022 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 78-88
Author(s):  
E. S. Shugrina
Keyword(s):  
Public Authority ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Software Products ◽  
Russian Constitution ◽  
Scope Of Application ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
The Prestige

The subject of the research are the materials of judicial practice (texts of court decisions and information sources, the content of information about the results of court hearings), data from sociological surveys.The purpose of the article is to identify the relationship between the knowledge of municipal law, local self-government or urbanism obtained during training at a university and subsequent professional activities related to local self-government carried out at different levels of public authority.The methodology. A comprehensive methodology was used, including legal and sociological research methods. Formal legal, legal technical and comparative legal were used among the legal methods. The sociological methods include the method of expert survey and the method of content analysis, which makes it possible to reveal the real position of the respondent, if he wants to disguise it not only the positions expressed, but also the words actually used were analyzed. The most repeatable ones were identified with the help of special software products.The main results, scope of application. Quite significant amendments were made to the Russian Constitution in 2020. One of the novels concerns a unified system of public power, the inclusion of a new term in the text of the constitution. The implementation of these novels in the legislation on local self-government is expected after the completion of the formation of the updated composition of the Federal Assembly. For this, it is necessary not only to reveal the term itself and list the levels of public authority, but also to establish new principles of their relationship, incl. in a sense, uniform standards, rules and requirements for state and local authorities. One of the possible consequences of this may be an increase in the prestige of work in local self-government bodies, a change in attitudes towards work in local self-government bodies.Conclusions. The analysis of the materials of law enforcement practice, the data of opinion polls on trust in local self-government bodies, attitude to the results of the work of local self-government bodies and their officials show that of all levels of government the municipal level is least trusted. Unfortunately, such an attitude begins to form in the process of training future employees of public authorities at different levels.

scholarly journals Evaluating the relative contributions of copying and reconstruction processes in cultural transmission episodes

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0256901
Author(s):  
James W. A. Strachan ◽  
Arianna Curioni ◽  
Merryn D. Constable ◽  
Günther Knoblich ◽  
Mathieu Charbonneau
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Contextual Cues ◽  
Task Context ◽  
Biological Mechanisms ◽  
Transmission Chain ◽  
Pragmatic Inference ◽  
The One

The ability to transmit information between individuals through social learning is a foundational component of cultural evolution. However, how this transmission occurs is still debated. On the one hand, the copying account draws parallels with biological mechanisms for genetic inheritance, arguing that learners copy what they observe and novel variations occur through random copying errors. On the other hand, the reconstruction account claims that, rather than directly copying behaviour, learners reconstruct the information that they believe to be most relevant on the basis of pragmatic inference, environmental and contextual cues. Distinguishing these two accounts empirically is difficult based on data from typical transmission chain studies because the predictions they generate frequently overlap. In this study we present a methodological approach that generates different predictions of these accounts by manipulating the task context between model and learner in a transmission episode. We then report an empirical proof-of-concept that applies this approach. The results show that, when a model introduces context-dependent embedded signals to their actions that are not intended to be transmitted, it is possible to empirically distinguish between competing predictions made by these two accounts. Our approach can therefore serve to understand the underlying cognitive mechanisms at play in cultural transmission and can make important contributions to the debate between preservative and reconstructive schools of thought.

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