Cost-benefit analysis of social/cultural learning in a nonstationary uncertain environment - An evolutionary simulation and an experiment with human subjects
Cost-benefit analysis of social/cultural learning in a nonstationary uncertain environment - An evolutionary simulation and an experiment with human subjects
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/s1090-5138(02)00101-0
复制
发表时间：
2002-09-01
影响因子：
5.1
通讯作者：
Nakanishi, D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kameda, T;Nakanishi, D
社会/文化学习是减少环境不确定性的有效方法，帮助个人便宜地采用适应性行为。尽管这对于学习时间稳定的目标很明显，例如获得避免有毒食品的技能，但在时间上不稳定的环境中社会/文化学习的实用性尚不清楚，因为社会学习获得的知识可能已经过时了。本文在理论上和经验上都涉及在非组织环境中社会/文化学习的适应价值。我们首先进行了进化计算机模拟，扩展了Henrich和Boyd的[Evol。哼。行为。 19（1998）215。]文化传播模型，并取得以下结果。当个人学习非组织环境的成本高昂时，人口中会出现混合平衡，在那里，从事昂贵的个人学习的成员以及跳过信息搜索和自由骑行的成员，并以稳定的比例共存其他成员的搜索工作。这样的“生产者折叠者”结构有资格使社会/文化学习的有效性严重，尤其是使用社会信息时的“整合偏见”。然后，我们通过实施实验室中实施非平稳性不确定环境的实验测试了这些命题。结果支持我们的论文。讨论了这些发现和一些未来方向的含义。 （c）2002 Elsevier Science Inc.保留所有权利。
Social/cultural learning is an effective way to reduce uncertainty about the environment, helping individuals adopt an adaptive behavior cheaply. Although this is evident for learning about temporally stable targets, such as acquisition of a skill in avoiding toxic foods, the utility of social/cultural learning in a temporally unstable environment is less clear, since knowledge acquired by social learning may be outdated. This paper addresses the adaptive value of social/cultural learning in a nonstationary environment both theoretically and empirically. We first conducted an evolutionary computer simulation that extended Henrich and Boyd's [Evol. Hum. Behav. 19 (1998) 215.] model of cultural transmission, with the following results. When individual learning about the nonstationary environment is costly, a mixed equilibrium emerges in the population, where members who engage in costly individual learning and members who skip the information search and free-ride on other members' search efforts coexist at a stable ratio. Such a "producer-scrounger" structure qualifies effectiveness of social/cultural learning severely, especially "conformity bias" when using social information. We then tested these propositions by an experiment implementing a nonstationary uncertain environment in a laboratory. The results supported our thesis. Implications of these findings and some future directions are discussed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.