Social learning may lead to population level conformity without individual level frequency bias

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary anthropology
• Behavioral ecology
• Social learning theory

Background:

• Cultural transmission requires behavioral conformity within populations.
• Gene-culture coevolution research posits conformity arises from frequency-biased social learning (adopting majority behaviors).
• Frequency-bias is impossible when learning from a single role model.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate that population-level behavioral trends (conformity or anticonformity) are nearly inevitable through social enhancement.
• To explore how individual learning rules influence the direction of these population trends.
• To offer a new interpretation of existing simulation findings and highlight the importance of empirical data for model specification.

Main Methods:

• Mathematical modeling of social learning dynamics.
• Analysis of social enhancement mechanisms where individuals update behavior probabilities based on observed actions.
• Investigating the impact of different individual updating rules on population-level trends.

Main Results:

• Social enhancement alone can lead to population-level behavioral trends, even without explicit frequency-bias.
• The specific updating rule employed by individuals determines whether the population trend is conformist or anticonformist.
• Model outcomes are highly sensitive to the precise specifications of individual learning rules.

Conclusions:

• Behavioral conformity or anticonformity is a likely outcome in populations utilizing social enhancement for learning.
• The direction of emergent population trends is contingent on the micro-level learning rules of individuals.
• Emphasizes the critical need for empirical data to inform and validate theoretical models of social learning and cultural evolution.