title: How social learning adds up to a culture: from birdsong to human public opinion.
abstract: Distributed social learning may occur at many temporal and spatial scales, but it rarely adds up to a stable culture. Cultures vary in stability and diversity (polymorphism), ranging from chaotic or drifting cultures, through cumulative polymorphic cultures, to stable monolithic cultures with high conformity levels. What features can sustain polymorphism, preventing cultures from collapsing into either chaotic or highly conforming states? We investigate this question by integrating studies across two quite separate disciplines: the emergence of song cultures in birds, and the spread of public opinion and social conventions in humans. In songbirds, the learning process has been studied in great detail, while in human studies the structure of social networks has been experimentally manipulated on large scales. In both cases, the manner in which communication signals are compressed and filtered - either during learning or while traveling through the social network - can affect culture polymorphism and stability. We suggest a simple mechanism of a shifting balance between converging and diverging social forces to explain these effects. Understanding social forces that shape cultural evolution might be useful for designing agile communication systems, which are stable and polymorphic enough to promote gradual changes in institutional behavior.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065, USA Tchernichovski@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Ofer
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6788-614X
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Tchernichovski
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Language Sciences, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, 3 Charles Street, EH8 9JS, UK.
authors.forename: Olga
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Feher
authors.affiliation: Division of Science, The City College of New York, New York, NY 10031, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Fimiarz
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
authors.forename: Dalton
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Conley
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D011639:Public Opinion; D000067570:Social Learning; D012944:Social Support; D020308:Songbirds / Q000502:physiology; D014828:Vocalization, Animal
keywords: Birdsong; Culture; Public opinion; Social learning; Vocal learning