title: Specialized hybrid learners resolve Rogers' paradox about the adaptive value of social learning.
abstract: Culture is considered an evolutionary adaptation that enhances reproductive fitness. A common explanation is that social learning, the learning mechanism underlying cultural transmission, enhances mean fitness by avoiding the costs of individual learning. This explanation was famously contradicted by Rogers (1988), who used a simple mathematical model to show that cheap social learning can invade a population without raising its mean fitness. He concluded that some crucial factor remained unaccounted for, which would reverse this surprising result. Here we extend this model to include a more complex environment and limited resources, where individuals cannot reliably learn everything about the environment on their own. Under such conditions, cheap social learning evolves and enhances mean fitness, via hybrid learners capable of specializing their individual learning. We then show that while spatial or social constraints hinder the evolution of hybrid learners, a novel social learning strategy, complementary copying, can mitigate these effects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Canada. Electronic address: milad.kharratzadeh@mail.mcgill.ca.
authors.forename: Milad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kharratzadeh
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, McGill University, Canada.
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Montrey
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, McGill University, Canada.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Metz
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, McGill University, Canada; School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: Thomas R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Shultz
mesh_terms: D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012944:Social Support
keywords: Agent-based simulation; Evolution; Invasion analysis; Rogers' paradox; Social learning