Rogers’ Paradox Recast and Resolved: Population Structure and the Evolution of Social Learning Strategies

Rendell, Luke; Fogarty, Laurel; Laland, Kevin N.

doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00817.x

Cited by 107 publications

(139 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…It is like cheating on a test: you do as well as the person you copy from but avoid all that tedious studying. However, evolutionary models show that if this is the only benefit of social learning, there will be no increase in the ability of the population to adapt (31)(32)(33)(34). This surprising result emerges from the coevolutionary processes that affect the kinds of behaviors that are available to imitate and the psychology that controls learning and imitation.…”

Section: Cultural Adaptation Is a Population Processmentioning

confidence: 95%

The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation

Boyd

Richerson

Henrich

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

963

766

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In the last 60,000 y humans have expanded across the globe and now occupy a wider range than any other terrestrial species. Our ability to successfully adapt to such a diverse range of habitats is often explained in terms of our cognitive ability. Humans have relatively bigger brains and more computing power than other animals, and this allows us to figure out how to live in a wide range of environments. Here we argue that humans may be smarter than other creatures, but none of us is nearly smart enough to acquire all of the information necessary to survive in any single habitat. In even the simplest foraging societies, people depend on a vast array of tools, detailed bodies of local knowledge, and complex social arrangements and often do not understand why these tools, beliefs, and behaviors are adaptive. We owe our success to our uniquely developed ability to learn from others. This capacity enables humans to gradually accumulate information across generations and develop well-adapted tools, beliefs, and practices that are too complex for any single individual to invent during their lifetime.cognitive niche | cultural evolution | human evolution | human adaptation | intelligence

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Section: Cultural Adaptation Is a Population Processmentioning

confidence: 95%

The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation

Boyd

Richerson

Henrich

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

963

766

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“…These models include, but are not limited to, models of social learning (e.g., refs. [164][165][166][167], models of language evolution (e.g., refs. [168][169][170][171], empirically driven verbal models of human evolution based on patterns in material culture (e.g., refs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters

Creanza

Kolodny

Feldman

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

349

203

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Human cultural traits-behaviors, ideas, and technologies that can be learned from other individuals-can exhibit complex patterns of transmission and evolution, and researchers have developed theoretical models, both verbal and mathematical, to facilitate our understanding of these patterns. Many of the first quantitative models of cultural evolution were modified from existing concepts in theoretical population genetics because cultural evolution has many parallels with, as well as clear differences from, genetic evolution. Furthermore, cultural and genetic evolution can interact with one another and influence both transmission and selection. This interaction requires theoretical treatments of gene-culture coevolution and dual inheritance, in addition to purely cultural evolution. In addition, cultural evolutionary theory is a natural component of studies in demography, human ecology, and many other disciplines. Here, we review the core concepts in cultural evolutionary theory as they pertain to the extension of biology through culture, focusing on cultural evolutionary applications in population genetics, ecology, and demography. For each of these disciplines, we review the theoretical literature and highlight relevant empirical studies. We also discuss the societal implications of the study of cultural evolution and of the interactions of humans with one another and with their environment. cultural evolution | mathematical models | gene-culture coevolution | niche construction | demography H uman culture encompasses ideas, behaviors, and artifacts that can be learned and transmitted between individuals and can change over time (1). This process of transmission and change is reminiscent of Darwin's principle of descent with modification through natural selection, and Darwin himself drew this explicit link in the case of languages: "The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel" (2, 3). Theory underpins most scientific endeavors, and, in the 1970s, researchers began to lay the groundwork for cultural evolutionary theory, building on the neo-Darwinian synthesis of genetics and evolution by using verbal, diagrammatic, and mathematical models (4-8). These models are, by necessity, approximations of reality (9), but because they require researchers to specify their assumptions and extract the most important features from complex processes, they have proven exceedingly useful in advancing the study of cultural evolution (10). Here, we review the field of cultural evolutionary theory as it pertains to the extension of biology through culture. We focus on human culture because the bulk of cultural evolutionary models are human-centric and certain processes such as cumulative culture seem to be unique to humans. However, numerous nonhuman species also exhibit cultural transmission, and we consider the areas of overlap between models of human and animal culture in Discussion.The study of cultural evolution is im...

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“…He concluded that the population is expected to reach an equilibrium at which individual and social learners will be equal in their fitness. Rendell et al [28] however showed that by adding a spatial structure to this problem the mixed equilibrium may not occur.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tradeoffs between the strength of conformity and number of conformists in variable environments

Kandler

Laland

2013

Journal of Theoretical Biology

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Abstract. Organisms often respond to environmental change phenotypically, through learning strategies that enhance fitness in variable and changing conditions. But which strategies should we expect in population exposed to those conditions? We address this question by developing a mathematical model that specifies the consequences of different mixtures of individual and social learning strategies on the frequencies of different cultural variants in temporally and spatially changing environments. Assuming that alternative cultural variants are differently well-adapted to diverse environmental conditions, we are able to evaluate which mixture of learning strategies maximizes the mean fitness of the population. We find that, even in rapidly changing environments, a high proportion of the population will always engage in social learning. In those environments, the highest adaptation levels are achieved through relatively high fractions of individual learning and a strong conformist bias. We establish a negative relationship between the proportion of the population learning socially and the strength of conformity operating in a population: strong conformity requires fewer conformists (i.e. larger proportion of individual learning), while many conformists can only be found when conformist transmission is weak. Investigations of cultural diversity show that in frequently changing environments high levels of adaptation require high level of cultural diversity. Finally, we demonstrate how the developed mathematical framework can be applied to time series of usage or occurrence data of cultural traits. Using Approximate Bayesian Computation we are able to infer information about the underlying learning processes that could have produced observed patterns of variation in the dataset. Permanent repository link

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Rogers’ Paradox Recast and Resolved: Population Structure and the Evolution of Social Learning Strategies

Cited by 107 publications

References 25 publications

The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation

The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation

Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters

Tradeoffs between the strength of conformity and number of conformists in variable environments

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