title: Conformity cannot be identified based on population-level signatures.
abstract: Conformist transmission, defined as a disproportionate likelihood to copy the majority, is considered a potent mechanism underlying the emergence and stabilization of cultural diversity. However, ambiguity within and across disciplines remains as to how to identify conformist transmission empirically. In most studies, a population level outcome has been taken as the benchmark to evidence conformist transmission: a sigmoidal relation between individuals' probability to copy the majority and the proportional majority size. Using an individual-based model, we show that, under ecologically plausible conditions, this sigmoidal relation can also be detected without equipping individuals with a conformist bias. Situations in which individuals copy randomly from a fixed subset of demonstrators in the population, or in which they have a preference for one of the possible variants, yield similar sigmoidal patterns as a conformist bias would. Our findings warrant a revisiting of studies that base their conformist transmission conclusions solely on the sigmoidal curve. More generally, our results indicate that population level outcomes interpreted as conformist transmission could potentially be explained by other individual-level strategies, and that more empirical support is needed to prove the existence of an individual-level conformist bias in human and other animals.
authors: Eindhoven University of Technology, School of Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven, 5600 MB, The Netherlands.
authors: Alberto
authors: A
authors: Acerbi
authors: University of St Andrews, School of Psychology &Neuroscience, Westburn Lane, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JP, United Kingdom.|Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors: Edwin J C
authors: EJ
authors: van Leeuwen
authors: University of Leipzig, Department of Early Child Development and Culture and Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development, Jahnallee 59, Leipzig, 04109, Germany.
authors: Daniel B M
authors: DB
authors: Haun
authors: University of Birmingham, School of Psychology, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom.
authors: Claudio
authors: C
authors: Tennie
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D007858:Learning; D012925:Social Conformity