Social learning in cooperative dilemmas.

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary anthropology
• Behavioral economics
• Social psychology

Background:

• Cooperation is vital for social organization but challenging to maintain in large, migrating populations susceptible to exploitation.
• Cultural group selection models propose cooperation evolves through cultural transmission of norms via social learning, an assumption lacking empirical testing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To empirically test the assumption that individuals acquire cooperative strategies via social learning.
• To investigate whether individuals in a forager-horticulturist society (Pahari Korwa, India) use conformist or payoff-biased social learning in public goods games.

Main Methods:

• Conducted public goods games in 14 villages of the Pahari Korwa society in India.
• Analyzed individual learning tendencies, distinguishing between conformist (imitating the majority) and payoff-biased (imitating successful individuals) strategies.
• Examined how individual and village characteristics influence social learning strategies.

Main Results:

• Individuals exhibited high variability in social learning, with no clear overall tendency towards conformist or payoff-biased learning.
• Social learning strategies were influenced by both individual and village-level factors.
• Conformist learning decreased, while payoff-biased learning increased with higher modal contributions in the public goods game.

Conclusions:

• The use of social learning in cooperative dilemmas is context-dependent, varying with individual circumstances and environmental factors.
• The findings challenge the assumption of stably transmitted cultural norms of cooperation, suggesting more dynamic learning processes.
• Highlights the need for nuanced models of cultural evolution that account for environmental contingencies in social learning.