Prestige and content biases together shape the cultural transmission of narratives.

Richard E.W Berl,Michael C Gavin,Alarna N Samarasinghe,Seán G Roberts,Fiona M Jordan

doi:10.1017/ehs.2021.37

Abstract

Cultural transmission biases such as prestige are thought to have been a primary driver in shaping the dynamics of human cultural evolution. However, few empirical studies have measured the importance of prestige relative to other effects, such as content biases present within the information being transmitted. Here, we report the findings of an experimental transmission study designed to compare the simultaneous effects of a model using a high- or low-prestige regional accent with the presence of narrative content containing social, survival, emotional, moral, rational, or counterintuitive information in the form of a creation story. Results from multimodel inference reveal that prestige is a significant factor in determining the salience and recall of information, but that several content biases, specifically social, survival, negative emotional, and biological counterintuitive information, are significantly more influential. Further, we find evidence that reliance on prestige cues may serve as a conditional learning strategy when no content cues are available. Our results demonstrate that content biases serve a vital and underappreciated role in cultural transmission and cultural evolution. Social media summary: Storyteller and tale are both key to memorability, but some content is more important than the storyteller's prestige.

Highlights

Storytelling is a powerful and universal tool that humans use to know and understand the world (Bruner, 1991, 2009), to preserve history and traditional knowledge (Vansina, 1985; Lejano et al, 2013), to educate (Cajete, 1994; Piquemal, 2003), to persuade (Chang, 2009; Delgadillo & Escalas, 2004), and to heal (Struthers et al, 2004; White et al, 1990)
Our goal is to evaluate the relative effects of content biases and model-based biases on cultural transmission and thereby test longstanding theories in the field of cultural evolution
We found significant positive effects for prestige, social, survival, negative emotional, and biological counterintuitive biases on recall

Summary

Introduction

Storytelling is a powerful and universal tool that humans use to know and understand the world (Bruner, 1991, 2009), to preserve history and traditional knowledge (Vansina, 1985; Lejano et al, 2013), to educate (Cajete, 1994; Piquemal, 2003), to persuade (Chang, 2009; Delgadillo & Escalas, 2004), and to heal (Struthers et al, 2004; White et al, 1990). Stories encode complex cultural and ecological information, and have the capability to endure for thousands of years (da Silva & Tehrani, 2016; Nunn & Reid, 2016; Tehrani & d’Huy, 2017). Skilled storytelling may increase an individual’s reproductive fitness (Scalise Sugiyama, 1996; Smith et al, 2017) and social value, as well as promoting cooperation within groups (Smith et al, 2017). Stories are an efficient and effective way to pass on valuable information from generation to generation (Boyd, 2009), but why do some stories endure while others burn out soon after they are told (Tehrani, 2013; da Silva & Tehrani, 2016)? The differential survival of stories and their constituent parts could depend on aspects that make them more attractive—such as their narrative qualities, themes, or content—or on the identities of the storytellers themselves—including their reputation within the community, their charisma, or their performative skill. The biases that govern the transmission of stories from one person to another are thought to be the same that dictate the transmission of any kind of information, and these two specific types are referred to as “content” biases and “model-based” biases (Richerson & Boyd, 2005)

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