A reappreciation of ‘conformity’

Leeuwen, Edwin J. C. van; Acerbi, Alberto; Kendal, Rachel L.; Tennie, Claudio; Haun, Daniel B. M.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.09.010

Cited by 27 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…elders, or experts) is copied more than others, or that some individuals are consistently more active, and thus they will tend to be copied more. In these cases, it becomes imperative to scrutinize individual behavior, or, more specifically, code and analyze the observation records of all respective individuals38.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, in line with the results from our model, Heyes and Pearce25 suggest that conformist transmission in sticklebacks10 might be better explained by the simpler mechanism of paying selective attention to heightened foraging activity. Similarly, conformist transmission in great tits11 was alternatively explained in terms of simpler mechanisms like ‘copy when uncertain’ and/or ‘prefer social over individual information’2638.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Conformity cannot be identified based on population-level signatures

Acerbi

Leeuwen

Haun

et al. 2016

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Conformist transmission, defined as a disproportionate likelihood to copy the majority, is considered a potent mechanism underlying the emergence and stabilization of cultural diversity. However, ambiguity within and across disciplines remains as to how to identify conformist transmission empirically. In most studies, a population level outcome has been taken as the benchmark to evidence conformist transmission: a sigmoidal relation between individuals’ probability to copy the majority and the proportional majority size. Using an individual-based model, we show that, under ecologically plausible conditions, this sigmoidal relation can also be detected without equipping individuals with a conformist bias. Situations in which individuals copy randomly from a fixed subset of demonstrators in the population, or in which they have a preference for one of the possible variants, yield similar sigmoidal patterns as a conformist bias would. Our findings warrant a revisiting of studies that base their conformist transmission conclusions solely on the sigmoidal curve. More generally, our results indicate that population level outcomes interpreted as conformist transmission could potentially be explained by other individual-level strategies, and that more empirical support is needed to prove the existence of an individual-level conformist bias in human and other animals.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conformity cannot be identified based on population-level signatures

Acerbi

Leeuwen

Haun

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

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“…Scaling up, the presence of a sigmoidal acquisition curve at the population level-in which the relationship between the frequency of a behavior and the overall rate at which it is adopted is sigmoidal-has generally thought been to provide evidence of conformist learning in the population in question.Yet is this approach robust? Several recent papers have argued that the answer is a firm 'no' [14][15][16] . These critiques center on the claim that sigmoidal curves can be generated without conformist learning, and therefore that the presence of such curves is not evidence for conformist learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In two more recent papers, van Leeuwen et al (2016) 15 and Acerbi et al (2016) 16 have issued a more direct challenge to the validity of identifying conformist transmission from population-level sigmoidal acquisition curves. In these papers, they developed a simple computational model in which populations of 100 individuals were randomly initialized with one of two behaviours.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do Sigmoidal Acquisition Curves Indicate Conformity?

Farine

2017

Preprint

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The potential for behaviours to spread via cultural transmission has profound implications for our understanding of social dynamics and evolution. Several studies have provided empirical evidence that local traditions can be maintained in animal populations via conformist learning (i.e. copying the majority). A conformist bias can be characterized by a sigmoidal relationship between a behavior's prevalence in the population and an individual's propensity to adopt that behavior. For this reason, the presence of conformist learning in a population is often inferred from a sigmoidal acquisition curve in which the overall rate of adoption for the behavior is taken as the dependent variable. However, the validity of sigmoidal acquisition curves as evidence for conformist learning has recently been challenged by models suggesting that such curves can arise via alternative learning rules that do not involve conformity. We review these models, and find that the proposed alternative learning mechanisms either rely on faulty or unrealistic assumptions, or apply only in very specific cases. We therefore recommend that sigmoidal acquisition curves continue to be taken as evidence for conformist learning. Our paper also highlights the importance of understanding the generative processes of a model, rather than only focusing solely on the patterns produced. By studying these processes, our analysis suggests that current practices by empiricists have provided robust evidence for conformist transmission in both humans and non-human animals.

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Social Animals and the Potential for Morality: On the Cultural Exaptation of Behavioral Capacities Required for Normativity

Palao

2021

Synthese Library

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A reappreciation of ‘conformity’

Cited by 27 publications

References 26 publications

Conformity cannot be identified based on population-level signatures

Conformity cannot be identified based on population-level signatures

Do Sigmoidal Acquisition Curves Indicate Conformity?

Social Animals and the Potential for Morality: On the Cultural Exaptation of Behavioral Capacities Required for Normativity

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