Evolution of Social Learning with Payoff and Content Bias

Charles Perreault,Robert Boyd

doi:10.3390/g13010007

Abstract

There has been much theoretical work aimed at understanding the evolution of social learning; and in most of it, individual and social learning are treated as distinct processes. A number of authors have argued that this approach is faulty because the same psychological mechanisms underpin social and individual learning. In previous work, we analyzed a simple model in which both individual and social learning are the result of a single learning process. Here, we extend this approach by showing how payoff and content biases evolve. We show that payoff bias leads to higher average fitness when environments are noisy and change rapidly. Content bias always evolves when the expected fitness benefits of alternative traits differ.

Highlights

There has been a substantial amount of theoretical work focused on the evolution of social learning [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]
To model the long-run evolution of the cultural capacities, researchers assume that the parameters that govern the cultural transmission process are genetically heritable, and ask how natural selection shapes the relative importance of social learning
Perreault et al [18] analyzed a model in which social and individual learning result from a single learning mechanism

Summary

Introduction

There has been a substantial amount of theoretical work focused on the evolution of social learning [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. Investigators asked what conditions favor individuals who imitate others, rather than learn on their own, and how selection shapes the process of imitation. Social learning is a separate transmission process in which the determinants of behavior are transmitted socially from one individual to another. This transmission process may be subject to errors, biases and systematic transformations, but most work assumes that social learning leads to reasonably accurate copying. To model the long-run evolution of the cultural capacities, researchers assume that the parameters that govern the cultural transmission process are genetically heritable, and ask how natural selection shapes the relative importance of social learning. This work has been widely influential, transforming the idea of cultural evolution from a vague analogy to an vibrant area of both theoretical and empirical research [15]

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Results

Conclusion