Trade-offs, control conditions, and alternative designs in the experimental study of cultural evolution

Maxime Derex, Pierce Edmiston, Gary Lupyan and Alex Mesoudi
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Maxime Derex: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Pierce Edmiston: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Gary Lupyan: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alex Mesoudi: University of Exeter

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Abstract: Although the theoretical foundations of the modern field of cultural evolution have been in place for over 50 y, laboratory experiments specifically designed to test cultural evolutionary theory have only existed for the last two decades. Here, we review the main experimental designs used in the field of cultural evolution, as well as major findings related to the generation of cultural variation, content- and model-based biases, cumulative cultural evolution, and nonhuman culture. We then identify methodological advances that demonstrate the iterative improvement of cultural evolution experimental methods. Finally, we focus on one common critique of cultural evolution experiments, the appropriate individual learning control condition needed to demonstrate cumulative culture, and present an original experimental investigation relevant to this critique. Participants completed a combinatorial innovation task allowing for cumulative improvement over time in one of four commonly used experimental designs/conditions: social learners in chains, social learners in groups, individual learners experiencing an extended session lasting the same accumulated time as an entire chain or group, and individual learners experiencing repeated sessions adding up to the same total time. We found that repeated individual learning resulted in superior performance to any other condition. We discuss these findings in light of the relevance of the specific criticism of previous experimental studies that purport to have demonstrated cumulative culture. We also use our findings to discuss the broad trade-offs that participants face when learning individually and socially in different contexts, including variable acquisition costs, redundancy of effort in groups, and cognitive and motivational fatigue.

Keywords: Cultural evolution; Cumulative culture; Laboratory experiments; Social learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11-18
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04845101v1
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Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024, 121 (48), pp.e2322886121. ⟨10.1073/pnas.2322886121⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04845101

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2322886121

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