Beyond Kith and Kin Culture and the Scale of Human Cooperation

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-122
Author(s):  
Robert Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Changing Environments ◽  
Worldwide Web ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Large Groups

This chapter details Robert Boyd's account of social learning and cumulative cultural evolution to illuminate how societies adapt to changing environments and develop ever more sophisticated tools and technology. Humans' ability to learn by imitation and their evolved trusting psychology are used to explain the centrality of social norms, and to explain why and how humans have for so long been “supercooperators.” Even in foraging societies, the extent of human cooperation vastly exceeds that of any other species. Ultimately, millennia of cumulative cultural evolution have helped create a vast “worldwide web of specialization and exchange.” Humans are unique in that “people cooperate in large groups of almost unrelated individuals to provide public goods.” Cooperation in large groups “requires systems of norms enforced by sanctions.” In larger and more complex societies, cooperation and the provision of public goods depend crucially on coercive sanctioning by third parties: institutions such as police and courts.

Copy the In-group: Group Membership Trumps Perceived Reliability, Warmth, and Competence in a Social-Learning Task

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762110322
Author(s):  
Marcel Montrey ◽  
Thomas R. Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Minimal Group Paradigm ◽  
Learning Game ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Surprisingly little is known about how social groups influence social learning. Although several studies have shown that people prefer to copy in-group members, these studies have failed to resolve whether group membership genuinely affects who is copied or whether group membership merely correlates with other known factors, such as similarity and familiarity. Using the minimal-group paradigm, we disentangled these effects in an online social-learning game. In a sample of 540 adults, we found a robust in-group-copying bias that (a) was bolstered by a preference for observing in-group members; (b) overrode perceived reliability, warmth, and competence; (c) grew stronger when social information was scarce; and (d) even caused cultural divergence between intermixed groups. These results suggest that people genuinely employ a copy-the-in-group social-learning strategy, which could help explain how inefficient behaviors spread through social learning and how humans maintain the cultural diversity needed for cumulative cultural evolution.

scholarly journals The evolution of high-fidelity social learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1928) ◽  
pp. 20200090
Author(s):  
Marcel Montrey ◽  
Thomas R. Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Bayesian Model ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
High Fidelity ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Over Time

A defining feature of human culture is that knowledge and technology continually improve over time. Such cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) probably depends far more heavily on how reliably information is preserved than on how efficiently it is refined. Therefore, one possible reason that CCE appears diminished or absent in other species is that it requires accurate but specialized forms of social learning at which humans are uniquely adept. Here, we develop a Bayesian model to contrast the evolution of high-fidelity social learning, which supports CCE, against low-fidelity social learning, which does not. We find that high-fidelity transmission evolves when (1) social and (2) individual learning are inexpensive, (3) traits are complex, (4) individual learning is abundant, (5) adaptive problems are difficult and (6) behaviour is flexible. Low-fidelity transmission differs in many respects. It not only evolves when (2) individual learning is costly and (4) infrequent but also proves more robust when (3) traits are simple and (5) adaptive problems are easy. If conditions favouring the evolution of high-fidelity transmission are stricter (3 and 5) or harder to meet (2 and 4), this could explain why social learning is common, but CCE is rare.

scholarly journals Social learning and the demise of costly cooperation in humans

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1853) ◽  
pp. 20170067 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell N. Burton-Chellew ◽  
Claire El Mouden ◽  
Stuart A. West
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Experimental Testing ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Public Goods Games

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.

scholarly journals Social learning in swarm robotics

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bredeche ◽  
Nicolas Fontbonne
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Swarm Robotics ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Robot Swarms ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Robotic Tasks ◽  
Behavioural Strategies

In this paper, we present an implementation of social learning for swarm robotics. We consider social learning as a distributed online reinforcement learning method applied to a collective of robots where sensing, acting and coordination are performed on a local basis. While some issues are specific to artificial systems, such as the general objective of learning efficient (and ideally, optimal) behavioural strategies to fulfill a task defined by a supervisor, some other issues are shared with social learning in natural systems. We discuss some of these issues, paving the way towards cumulative cultural evolution in robot swarms, which could enable complex social organization necessary to achieve challenging robotic tasks. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals A preference to learn from successful rather than common behaviours in human social dilemmas

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1965) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell N. Burton-Chellew ◽  
Victoire D'Amico
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Dilemma ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common ◽  
Social Behaviours ◽  
Social Level

Human cooperation is often claimed to be special and requiring explanations based on gene–culture coevolution favouring a desire to copy common social behaviours. If this is true, then individuals should be motivated to both observe and copy common social behaviours. Previous economic experiments, using the public goods game, have suggested individuals' desire to sacrifice for the common good and to copy common social behaviours. However, previous experiments have often not shown examples of success. Here we test, on 489 participants, whether individuals are more motivated to learn about, and more likely to copy, either common or successful behaviours. Using the same social dilemma and standard instructions, we find that individuals were primarily motivated to learn from successful rather than common behaviours. Consequently, social learning disfavoured costly cooperation, even when individuals could observe a stable, pro-social level of cooperation. Our results call into question explanations for human cooperation based on cultural evolution and/or a desire to conform with common social behaviours. Instead, our results indicate that participants were motivated by personal gain, but initially confused, despite receiving standard instructions. When individuals could learn from success, they learned to cooperate less, suggesting that human cooperation is maybe not so special after all.

scholarly journals Exceptions to the rule? Ethnographic alternatives to cumulative cultural evolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (14) ◽  
pp. 177-235
Author(s):  
George F. Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
Isolated Populations ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Coevolution Theory ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
And Function ◽  
Efficient Transmission

In suggesting that the rules that govern the evolution of cumulative culture are observed in all modern societies, gene-culture coevolution theory implies that the biases that affect the successful ‘ratcheting’ and efficient transmission of innovations are cross-cultural universals. In the modeling of the theory the stress is placed on demographic strength, the absence of which would render small and isolated populations vulnerable to the ‘treadmill effect’, the inevitable consequence of impaired social learning. However, the ethnographic literature documents small groups of isolated hunters and gatherers who have devised intricate risk-reduction networks that do not necessarily proliferate technological innovations and function only in low demographic settings. Moreover, with merit and abilities being equally distributed, the model-based and conformist biases that influence social learning in gene-culture coevolution theory become irrelevant and elaborate ‘leveling mechanisms’ inhibit the acquisition of status and prestige. As a result, no cultural models can rise to prominence and sway the trajectory of cultural change. Contrary to the predictions of the theory, these societies do not seem to be plagued by cultural loss and, instead of hopelessly running the treadmill and living in poverty, they have developed egalitarian and, to an extent, ‘affluent’ societies. The model forwarded in this paper resolves this apparent paradox by enrolling the hypothesis of ‘cultural neoteny’. It is contended that egalitarian societies – despite their simple (immediate-return) mode of subsistence – are not the vestiges of an ancestral/universal stage from which more complex (delayed-return) economies would linearly evolve, but a relatively recent and idiosyncratic achievement through ‘subtractive cultural evolution’. Keywords: anarchic theory in ethnography, cultural heterochrony, cumulative/subtractive cultural evolution, immediate-return/egalitarian societies, ratcheting/leveling mechanisms.

scholarly journals Studying cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory

2008 ◽  
Vol 363 (1509) ◽  
pp. 3529-3539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine A Caldwell ◽  
Ailsa E Millen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Adaptive Complexity ◽  
Over Time

Cumulative cultural evolution is the term given to a particular kind of social learning, which allows for the accumulation of modifications over time, involving a ratchet-like effect where successful modifications are maintained until they can be improved upon. There has been great interest in the topic of cumulative cultural evolution from researchers from a wide variety of disciplines, but until recently there were no experimental studies of this phenomenon. Here, we describe our motivations for developing experimental methods for studying cumulative cultural evolution and review the results we have obtained using these techniques. The results that we describe have provided insights into understanding the outcomes of cultural processes at the population level. Our experiments show that cumulative cultural evolution can result in adaptive complexity in behaviour and can also produce convergence in behaviour. These findings lend support to ideas that some behaviours commonly attributed to natural selection and innate tendencies could in fact be shaped by cultural processes.

scholarly journals Beyond social learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1828) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manvir Singh ◽  
Alberto Acerbi ◽  
Christine A. Caldwell ◽  
Étienne Danchin ◽  
Guillaume Isabel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Cognitive Behavioural ◽  
The Social ◽  
Transmission Of Information ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Cultural evolution requires the social transmission of information. For this reason, scholars have emphasized social learning when explaining how and why culture evolves. Yet cultural evolution results from many mechanisms operating in concert. Here, we argue that the emphasis on social learning has distracted scholars from appreciating both the full range of mechanisms contributing to cultural evolution and how interactions among those mechanisms and other factors affect the output of cultural evolution. We examine understudied mechanisms and other factors and call for a more inclusive programme of investigation that probes multiple levels of the organization, spanning the neural, cognitive-behavioural and populational levels. To guide our discussion, we focus on factors involved in three core topics of cultural evolution: the emergence of culture, the emergence of cumulative cultural evolution and the design of cultural traits. Studying mechanisms across levels can add explanatory power while revealing gaps and misconceptions in our knowledge. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Foundations of cultural evolution’.

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