Social learning in cultural evolution: on the psychological motivations underlying high fidelity transmission and innovation

Thesis

This thesis investigates the psychological motivations that drive cultural transmission by empirically testing the Bifocal Stance Theory (BST; Jagiello, Heyes, & Whitehouse, 2022), which proposes that cultural learning is fundamentally motivated by the desire to either affiliate with others or to extract instrumentally useful information. Moreover, it tests BST against popular by-product explanations from developmental psychology, cognitive anthropology and ethnography, which subscribe to the notion that all forms of culture are perceived as instrumental by their practitioners – a view this thesis refers to as the monocle account of cultural transmission. The explanatory power of bifocal and monocle theories in accounting for differential patterns of cultural transmissions is investigated across six diverse learning experiments, encompassing both actions and narratives as units of transmission (N = 1,051). The reported findings offer preliminary evidence that social learners perceive cultural practices as either ritualistic or instrumental based on the respective numbers of specific contextual cues, such as the physical structure of transmitted actions, the verbal frames accompanying them, as well as the characteristics of the actors performing them. While important limitations apply, the reported empirical efforts give rise to fruitful discussions and pave the way for productive follow-up inquiries. Crucially, rather than prioritizing one aspect of culture over another, this thesis advocates for the importance of using an inclusive conceptual framework to study social learning within the realms of psychology, cultural evolution, and cognitive anthropology. Ultimately, by illuminating these hallmark features of humanity we can get one step closer to enhancing our understanding of our position in the tapestry of life.

Authors: Jagiello, R

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-rd4jbz87k
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anthropology; Psychology