Persistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.

We report an experimental test of the hypothesis that contrasting traditions will persist for longer, maintaining cultural differences between otherwise similar groups, under conditions of uncertainty about payoffs from individual learning. We studied the persistence of two alternative, experimental...

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Autores principales:	Christine A Caldwell, Roland M Eve
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/110744c695204e5c9f0e8975f96fa6c1
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:110744c695204e5c9f0e8975f96fa6c1
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:110744c695204e5c9f0e8975f96fa6c12021-11-18T08:15:07ZPersistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0099708https://doaj.org/article/110744c695204e5c9f0e8975f96fa6c12014-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/24940597/pdf/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203We report an experimental test of the hypothesis that contrasting traditions will persist for longer, maintaining cultural differences between otherwise similar groups, under conditions of uncertainty about payoffs from individual learning. We studied the persistence of two alternative, experimentally-introduced, task solutions in chains of human participants. In some chains, participants were led to believe that final payoffs would be difficult to predict for an innovative solution, and in others, participants were aware that their final payoff would be directly linked to their immediate solution. Although the difference between the conditions was illusory (only participants' impressions were manipulated, not actual payoffs) clear differences were found between the conditions. Consistent with predictions, in the chains that were less certain about final payoffs, the distinctive variants endured over several replacement "generations" of participants. In contrast, in the other chains, the influence of the experimentally-introduced solutions was rapidly diluted by participants' exploration of alternative approaches. The finding provides support for the notion that rates of cultural change are likely to be slower for behaviors for which the relationship between performance and payoff may be hard to predict.Christine A CaldwellRoland M EvePublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 9, Iss 6, p e99708 (2014)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Christine A Caldwell Roland M Eve Persistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.
description	We report an experimental test of the hypothesis that contrasting traditions will persist for longer, maintaining cultural differences between otherwise similar groups, under conditions of uncertainty about payoffs from individual learning. We studied the persistence of two alternative, experimentally-introduced, task solutions in chains of human participants. In some chains, participants were led to believe that final payoffs would be difficult to predict for an innovative solution, and in others, participants were aware that their final payoff would be directly linked to their immediate solution. Although the difference between the conditions was illusory (only participants' impressions were manipulated, not actual payoffs) clear differences were found between the conditions. Consistent with predictions, in the chains that were less certain about final payoffs, the distinctive variants endured over several replacement "generations" of participants. In contrast, in the other chains, the influence of the experimentally-introduced solutions was rapidly diluted by participants' exploration of alternative approaches. The finding provides support for the notion that rates of cultural change are likely to be slower for behaviors for which the relationship between performance and payoff may be hard to predict.
format	article
author	Christine A Caldwell Roland M Eve
author_facet	Christine A Caldwell Roland M Eve
author_sort	Christine A Caldwell
title	Persistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.
title_short	Persistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.
title_full	Persistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.
title_fullStr	Persistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.
title_full_unstemmed	Persistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.
title_sort	persistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2014
url	https://doaj.org/article/110744c695204e5c9f0e8975f96fa6c1
work_keys_str_mv	AT christineacaldwell persistenceofcontrastingtraditionsinculturalevolutionunpredictablepayoffsgenerateslowerratesofculturalchange AT rolandmeve persistenceofcontrastingtraditionsinculturalevolutionunpredictablepayoffsgenerateslowerratesofculturalchange
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Persistence of contrasting traditions in cultural evolution: unpredictable payoffs generate slower rates of cultural change.

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