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

ABSTRACT: A requirement of culture, whether animal or human, is some degree of conformity of behavior within populations. Researchers of gene-culture coevolution have suggested that population level conformity may result from frequency-biased social learning: individuals sampling multiple role models and preferentially adopting the majority behavior in the sample. When learning from a single role model, frequency-bias is not possible. We show why a population-level trend, either conformist or anticonformist, may nonetheless be almost inevitable in a population of individuals that learn through social enhancement, that is, using observations of others' behavior to update their own probability of using a behavior in the future. The exact specification of individuals' updating rule determines the direc

SUBMITTER: Eriksson K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5725437 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature