1] Theoretical Biology Group, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 11103, Groningen 9700 CC, The Netherlands [2].
Theoretical Biology Group, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 11103, Groningen 9700 CC, The Netherlands.
Nat Commun. 2014 Apr 4;5:3570. doi: 10.1038/ncomms4570.
Social learning has allowed humans to build up extensive cultural repertoires, enabling them to adapt to a wide variety of environmental and social conditions. However, it is unclear which social learning strategies people use, especially in social contexts where their payoffs depend on the behaviour of others. Here we show experimentally that individuals differ in their social learning strategies and that they tend to employ the same learning strategy irrespective of the interaction context. Payoff-based learners focus on their peers' success, while decision-based learners disregard payoffs and exclusively focus on their peers' past behaviour. These individual differences may be of considerable importance for cultural evolution. By means of a simple model, we demonstrate that groups harbouring individuals with different learning strategies may be faster in adopting technological innovations and can be more efficient through successful role differentiation. Our study highlights the importance of individual variation for human interactions and sheds new light on the dynamics of cultural evolution.
社会学习使人类能够积累丰富的文化曲目，使他们能够适应各种环境和社会条件。然而，目前尚不清楚人们使用哪些社会学习策略，特别是在他们的收益取决于他人行为的社会背景下。在这里，我们通过实验表明，个体在社会学习策略上存在差异，并且他们倾向于无论互动背景如何都采用相同的学习策略。基于收益的学习者关注同伴的成功，而基于决策的学习者则忽略收益，只关注同伴的过去行为。这些个体差异对于文化进化可能具有重要意义。通过一个简单的模型，我们证明了拥有不同学习策略的个体的群体可能更快地采用技术创新，并且通过成功的角色分化可以更有效率。我们的研究强调了个体变异对于人类互动的重要性，并为文化进化的动态提供了新的见解。
