Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T17:15:55.112Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conformity versus transmission in animal cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2022

Andrew Whiten Open the ORCID record for Andrew Whiten [Opens in a new window]
Andrew Whiten*
Affiliation:
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The principal contrasts that Jagiello et al. highlight are among many cultural transmission biases we now know of. I suggest they are also reflected more widely in social learning decisions among nonhuman animal cultures governing whether cultural innovations spread, or are instead over-ridden by immigrants' conformity in their new group. Such conformity may serve either informational or social-integrative functions.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 45 , 2022 , e273
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, J. (2019). Community through culture: From insects to whales. BioEssays 41, 1900060.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Allen, J., Garland, E. C., Dunlop, R. A., & Noad, M. J. (2018). Cultural revolutions reduce complexity in the songs of humpback whales. Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, 285, 2018.2088.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Aplin, L. M. (2019). Culture and cultural evolution in birds: A review of the evidence. Animal Behaviour, 147, 179–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aplin, L. M., Farine, D. R., Morand-Ferron, J., Cockburn, A., Thornton, A., & Sheldon, B. C. (2015). Experimentally induced innovations lead to persistent culture via conformity in wild birds. Nature, 518, 538–541.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Danchin, E., Nöbel, S., Pocheville, A., Dagaeff, A.-C., Demay, L., Alphand, M., … Isabel, G. (2018) Cultural flies: Conformist social learning in fruit flies predicts long-lasting mate-choice traditions. Science, 362, 1025–1030.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deutsch, M., & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51, 629–636. doi: 10.1037/h0046408CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eriksson, K., Strimling, P., & Coultas, J. (2015). Bidirectional associations between descriptive and prescriptive norms. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 127, 59–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, B. R., & Grant, P. R. (2002). Simulating secondary contact in allopatric speciation: An empirical test of premating isolation. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 76, 545–556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haun, D. B. M., Rekers, Y., & Tomasello, M. (2012). Majority-biased transmission in chimpanzees and human children, but not orangutans. Current Biology, 22, 727–731.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heyes, C. (2018). Cognitive gadgets: The cultural evolution of thinking. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kendal, R. L., Boogert, N. J., Rendell, L., Laland, K. N., Webster, M., & Jones, P. L. (2018). Social learning strategies: Bridge-building between fields. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22, 651–665.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lapinsky, M. K., & Rimal, R. N. (2005). An explication of social norms. Communication Theory, 15, 127–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luncz, L. V., & Boesch, C. (2014). Tradition over trend: Neighboring chimpanzee communities maintain differences in cultural behaviour despite frequent immigration of adult females. American Journal of Primatology, 76, 649–657.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Malley, R. C., Wallauer, W., Murray, C., & Goodall, J. (2012). The appearance and spread of ant fishing in the Kasekela chimpanzees of Gombe: A possible case of intercommunity cultural transmission. Current Anthropology, 53, 650–670.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paukner, A., Suomi, S. J., Visalberghi, E., & Ferrari, P. F. (2009). Capuchin monkeys display affiliation toward humans who imitate them. Science, 325, 880–883. doi: 10.1126/science.1176269CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van de Waal, E., Borgeaud, C., & Whiten, A. (2013). Potent social learning and conformity shape a wild primate's foraging decisions. Science, 6131, 483–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van de Waal, E., van Schaik, C. P., & Whiten, A. (2017). Resilience of experimentally-seeded dietary traditions in wild vervets: Evidence from group fissions. American Journal of Primatology, 79, e22687. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22687.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Leeuwen, E. C., Cronin, K., & Haun, D. B. M. (2014). A group-specific arbitrary tradition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Animal Cognition, 17, 1421–1425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, S. K., Lambeth, S. P., Schapiro, S. J., & Whiten, A. (2018). Chimpanzees prioritise social information over existing behaviours in a group context but not in dyads. Animal Cognition, 21, 407–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, H., & Rendell, L. (2015). The cultural lives of whales and dolphins. Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Whiten, A. (2019a). Conformity and over-imitation: An integrative review of variant forms of hyper-reliance on social learning. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 51, 31–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. (2019b). Cultural evolution in animals. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, 50, 27–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. (2021) The burgeoning reach of animal culture. Science, 372, eabe6514.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, H., Levin, I. I., Norris, D. R., Newman, A. E. M., & Wheelwright, N. T. (2013). Three decades of cultural evolution in Savannah sparrow songs. Animal Behaviour, 85, 213–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar