United Kingdom

**Abstract:**

Cultural evolutionary theory has shown that social learning is adaptive across a broad range of conditions. However, experiments with humans frequently observe an unexplained underuse of beneficial social information (termed egocentric discounting). One hypothesis for this result is that individuals ignore social information that is likely to be untrustworthy. We tested this hypothesis using a two-player online task, where both players answered the same question in series. Player 2 was given two attempts, making the second after being shown advice from player 1 or their actual answer (spying). We manipulated the payoff structure of the task to have either a cooperative, neutral, or competitive incentive. As predicted, advice was the least honest and social information had the least influence in the competitive condition. Most player 2 participants also favoured spying rather than receiving advice when given the choice. Unexpectedly, a minority of participants favoured receiving advice and exhibited great social influence regardless of the payoff structure. Our results support the hypothesis that human’s may reduce their reliance on social information in contexts where it is more likely to be dishonest or manipulative. 

**Speaker&#39;s social media:**



Cultural Evolution Society Conference 2024

Competitive incentives reduce honesty and social influence 

egocentric discounting

epistemic vigilance

social learning

**Abstract:**

Cultural evolutionary theory has shown that social learning is adaptive across a broad range of conditions. However, experiments with humans frequently observe an unexplained underuse of beneficial social information (termed egocentric discounting). One hypothesis for this result is that individuals ignore social information that is likely to be untrustworthy. We tested this hypothesis using a two-player online task, where both players answered the same question in series. Player 2 was given two attempts, making the second after being shown advice from player 1 or their actual answer (spying). We manipulated the payoff structure of the task to have either a cooperative, neutral, or competitive incentive. As predicted, advice was the least honest and social information had the least influence in the competitive condition. Most player 2 participants also favoured spying rather than receiving advice when given the choice. Unexpectedly, a minority of participants favoured receiving advice and exhibited great social influence regardless of the payoff structure. Our results support the hypothesis that human’s may reduce their reliance on social information in contexts where it is more likely to be dishonest or manipulative. 

**Speaker's social media:**



lightning talk

Welcome to the Cultural Evolution Society (CES) Conference 2024, which was a hybrid conference held at Durham University (UK). The conference was hosted in Durham by the Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre (DCERC) with administrative assistance from the CES Transformation Fund team.

**For more information about the CES Conference, please visit the [CES Website Home Page](https://ces2024.webspace.durham.ac.uk/).**

#### Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre (DCERC) 
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
**Interdisciplinary study of cultural change and diversity**

We are a highly interdisciplinary group of researchers using evolutionary models to study cultural change and diversity.  We apply cultural evolutionary methods to a wide variety of topics including cognition, innovation, social learning, technology, art, music, narrative, religion, sociality, language and communication. We have a growing interest in applying cultural evolutionary theory to current societal challenges such as understanding the spread of prosocial health behaviours and health conspiracies.<br>
**[Discover More](https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/cultural-evolution/)**

#### CES 2024 [Code of Conduct](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BDJcgi95_jDy7VOEu72wfSR83D5JtHSc/view?usp=sharing)

If you feel at any time you have been the victim of harassment or inappropriate behavior that contradicts our code of conduct, you may use the following form to report the incident. 

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<br><br>



To access the site please register [**here**](https://ces2024.webspace.durham.ac.uk/registration-information/). 

Registration Is Required

The field of cultural evolution is growing in size and scope; its theories, methods and applications - both academic and applied - are getting ever more robust. Do join us in what promises to be an exciting exchange of ideas and a celebration of our field.

**Abstract:**

Migration has played a pivotal role in shaping both cultural and genetic diversity throughout human history. Results from population genetics show that even low rates of migration between populations lead to the homogenization of their genetic compositions. On the cultural side, we know that conformity helps maintain differences between groups. However, equivalent insights into the effect of migration on cultural composition remain limited. To address this gap, I have developed a simulation model that explores the joint evolution of genetic and cultural traits, investigating how varying strengths of conformity and migration rates influence differentiation both within and between populations

**Speaker's social media:**

Twitter: @camilla_cenni

RECORDING - Cultural drivers of stone-tool use in Balinese long-tailed macaques

**Abstract:**

Cultural evolutionary processes can often lead to a statistical association between neutral and adaptive traits during episodes of population dispersal and the introduction of a beneficial technology in a geographic region. 
Here, we examine such cultural hitchhiking processes using an individual-based model portraying cultural and genetic interaction between a migrant and an incumbent population. 
The two populations are characterised by different variants for their neutral and adaptive cultural traits, with the latter set providing a reproductive advantage for the migrant communities over the incumbent ones. 
We explore how the neutral traits of the migrant population spread and how this process is conditioned by the following factors: 1) the possibility of transmission of the adaptive traits; 2) the extent of the increased reproductive advantage provided by the adaptive variants of the migrant population; 3) post-marital residence rules; and 4) how and when neutral traits are transmitted. 
Our results reveal a diverse range of outputs, highlighting the relevance of factors such as the nature of post-martial resocialisation and the specific combination of post-marital residence rules and sex-biased transmission. 

**Speaker's social media:**

Twitter: @simoncarrignon

RECORDING - Post-marital residence rules and transmission pathways in cultural hitchhiking

**Abstract:**

Language provides humans a remarkably flexible and abstract way to transmit information. Here, we tested the hypothesis that language allows cultural evolution to improve our representation – or model – of the world. To do so, we investigated the role of language in cultural evolution from a reinforcement learning perspective that proposes that adaptative behavior is based on learning from rewards and punishments. Using a combination of experiments, computational models, and large language models, we aimed to uncover the processes through which language fuels cultural evolution. We implemented a sequential decision-making task, requiring a mental model of the task structure within an online transmission chain design (n = 1000, 10 generations). Trough an evolutionary selection algorithm, best performing participant were sampled and provided written advice about their model of the task for the next generation. Consistent with the idea that language is important for cultural evolution, we observe an increase in performance and model knowledge over generations. Analysis using large-language models reveal an intergeneration improvement in the model knowledge communicated via written advice. Overall, these results suggest that language allows CE to grow better representations of the world by successive combination and refinement of individual world models.


**Speaker's social media:**

Twitter: @BlubluDoScience

LIVE - Language allows cultural evolution to improve world models

**Abstract:**

Across cultures, mothers face trade-offs between childcare and labour. In hunter-gatherer societies, carrying infants during foraging can drain maternal energy and constrain mobility, and childcare duty during foraging may lower mothers’ work efficiency. These costs can be mitigated with other individuals’ help. 
Yet, it remains unclear how infant presence in foraging groups affects mothers’ mobility and foraging outcomes, such as travel duration, distance, exploration range, net energy expenditure, and net food returns. 
This study uses detailed GPS, heart rate, and food returns’ data from 359 foraging trips of 23 BaYaka mothers, through Bayesian analyses, to answer those questions.
It was found that infant presence increases foraging duration but not travel distance, range, energy expenditure, or food returns. Nevertheless, mothers travel longer distances and explore larger areas when in groups, particularly with more adults and females. 
It highlights that women might have to travel for longer to compensate for childcare costs, but also that group foraging enables BaYaka mothers to travel greater distances and ranges, regardless of infant presence. 
As a follow-up study, focal-follows of BaYaka mothers’ foraging trips were conducted. This data will provide insights into the individual and group-level strategies of hunter-gatherer mothers to balance childcare and foraging work.

**Speaker's social media:**

Twitter: @AmandineVisine

LIVE - Compatibility between childcare and subsistence tasks during collaborative foraging of BaYaka mothers in Congo Basin

**Abstract:**

Words within a language share more sounds than would be expected by chance, and this similarity cannot be explained by phonological rules alone (Dautriche et al. 2017; Mahowald et al. 2018). This is somewhat puzzling, since language comprehension is easier when words are more distinct. However, language production is easier when words are more alike. We use techniques from language evolution research to test the hypothesis that, in this instance, pressures from production outweigh those from comprehension. We model language transmission in an agent-based exemplar model, where the output of one generation becomes the input to the next (Kirby et al. 2015; Smith et al. 2003). We find that words become more alike under two assumptions about the production process: first, that errors tend to replace lower frequency sounds with higher frequency ones, and second, that retrieval tends to favour words that resemble others the agent knows. As these effects accumulate over generations – modulated by inferences about what the listener is likely to understand – initially random lexicons start to exhibit natural-language-like properties. Overall, this work sheds light on how languages balance competing pressures through a process of cultural evolution.

**Speaker's social media:**

Twitter: @mandolinguist

RECORDING - Language production biases increase word similarity through cultural transmission

**Abstract:**

Prior work has suggested that environmental variability can drive the evolution of social learning strategies, such as a frequency dependent or payoff-biased learning (Kendal et al. 2018, Aoki & Feldman 2014). Furthermore, moving to a novel environment might increase neurological plasticity (Park et al. 2021) and an individual’s sensitivity to social information (Deffner et al. 2020, Morchen et al. 2023). A prior experiment tested how great tits (Parus major) respond to temporal variability in payoffs (Aplin et al. 2017), although little is known about how tits respond to spatial variability. Here, we present results from a large scale cultural diffusion experiment with 18 micro-populations of great tits (N=144). We simulated an immigration event between pairs of populations with contrasting preferences for solving an automated foraging puzzle. Furthermore, the experiment had a 2x2 factorial design, where environmental cues were either symmetric or asymmetric, and rewards for solving preferences were also symmetric or asymmetric. We find that immigrant birds were most likely to adopt the residents’ preference when both environments and rewards were asymmetric. Using a bayesian dynamic learning model, we found that these birds were most sensitive to social information, and relied on a payoff-biased social learning strategy. In other conditions, birds were less sensitive to social information and did not evidence any strategic learning. This study provides empirical support for existing theory related to social learning strategies in a non-human animal. It also gives insight into when and why great tits evaluate the rewards of conspecifics.

Aoki K, Feldman MW. Evolution of learning strategies in temporally and spatially variable environments: a review of theory. Theoretical population biology. 2014 Feb 1;91:3-19.

Aplin LM, Sheldon BC, McElreath R. Conformity does not perpetuate suboptimal traditions in a wild population of songbirds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2017 Jul 25;114(30):7830-7.

Deffner D, Kleinow V, McElreath R. Dynamic social learning in temporally and spatially variable environments. Royal Society open science. 2020 Dec 2;7(12):200734.

Kendal RL, Boogert NJ, Rendell L, Laland KN, Webster M, Jones PL. Social learning strategies: Bridge-building between fields. Trends in cognitive sciences. 2018 Jul 1;22(7):651-65.

Mörchen J, Luhn F, Wassmer O, Kunz J, Kulik L, Van Noordwijk M, Van Schaik C, Rianti P, Atmoko SS. Migrant orangutan males use social learning to adapt to new habitat after dispersal. Frontiers Ecology And Evolution. 2023 Jul 5;11.

Park AJ, Harris AZ, Martyniuk KM, Chang CY, Abbas AI, Lowes DC, Kellendonk C, Gogos JA, Gordon JA. Reset of hippocampal–prefrontal circuitry facilitates learning. Nature. 2021 Mar 25;591(7851):615-9.

**Speaker's social media:**

twitter: @evogom; bluesky: mchimento.bsky.social

RECORDING - Great tits use payoff-biased learning when encountering spatial variability

**Abstract:**

Language exhibits systematicity in the way a set of discrete units, such as words or syllables, are used and reused to form larger linguistic sequences. This kind of systematicity is reflected by cross-linguistic regularities in the distributional statistics of language: Syllable transitions are more probable within words than at the boundary between words, and the frequency distributions of words follow a Zipfian power law. Both the statistical coherence of words and their skewed frequency distribution can aid language learning. However, it is still unclear how they arise in language in the first place. Here, we investigate whether their emergence may be driven by learnability pressures during cultural transmission. We conducted a non-linguistic iterated learning study in which participants observed and reproduced sets of color sequences that were produced by a previous participant. We show that during transmission, initially random sets of sequences evolve to have statistically coherent units with a skewed frequency distribution, and that these properties make them easier to reproduce. In doing so, we show how cultural transmission can shape the statistical structure of language and how learning pressures alone, in the absence of meaning or communication, can explain the presence of two cross-linguistic properties of language.

**Speaker's social media:**



LIVE - Universal statistical properties of language emerge in a cultural evolution experiment

**Abstract:**

The study of cultural evolution through music has often focused on a single musical component (e.g., harmonic progression), overlooking how different subcomponents of music might independently interact within and across cultures. What hinders having such a comprehensive view is the limited cross-cultural dataset and the reliance on music transcription, which is labour-intensive and biased towards Western music. We introduce a novel methodological pipeline that bypasses the steps of transcription and works directly on the raw audio, enabling a large-scale, non-Western-centric study of global musical cultures. We compiled a novel dataset of 28,540 popular songs from 58 countries and analyzed their melodic and rhythmic regularities. Our approach empirically quantifies the global musical landscape and reveals distinct cultural characteristics that align with qualitative musicological research. Interestingly, we find melodic and rhythmic components demonstrate independent characteristics - a culture's variety in melody did not necessarily reflect variety in rhythm, nor does similarity to other cultures in one dimension correspond to similarity in the other. We found a strong correlation between a culture's ethnic diversity and rhythmic variability, but not melodic variability, suggesting rhythm may be more culturally ingrained and less permeable to change than melody.

**Speaker's social media:**

Twitter: @TweetHarin, BlueSky: @harinblue.bsky.social

Competitive incentives reduce honesty and social influence

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RECORDING - Cultural drivers of stone-tool use in Balinese long-tailed macaques

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RESOURCES

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