Julie C. Coultas

When in Rome ... An evolutionary perspective on conformity

Is proportion as important as group size when exploring conformity in small groups? Two tests of Boyd and Richerson’s (1985) conformist transmission model were undertaken. In experiment one, 378 individuals were observed in a computer laboratory. A rare behaviour was modelled by a number of naive models. As each individual entered the laboratory the proportion of models of the behaviour and the behaviour of the newcomer was recorded. In experiment two, 476 participants in psychology experiments took part (unknowingly) in an additional experiment where both proportion and group size were manipulated. Logistic regression indicated that the proportion of models, but not group size, was a significant predictor of conformity in both experiments. The findings are discussed in terms of their contribution to an evolutionary theory of human cooperative behaviour.

Who Becomes a Teacher? The Characteristics of Student Teachers in Four Countries.

This paper reviews the characteristics of students entering initial training in four countries?Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, and Trinidad and Tobago. First a brief overview of the teacher education systems is provided. Second, biographical data is reviewed on age, religious affiliation, ethnic group and mother tongue, parental occupations and academic achievement, and students? educational qualifications. Third, some insights into trainees? perceptions about teaching and the teaching profession are presented. Finally, comparisons are made for two countries on cross-sectional data comparing the perceptions of entering and exiting trainees and newly qualified teachers. The results draw attention to the qualities and perceptions that those on initial training programmes bring to the teacher education curriculum. They provide a reminder that teacher education curricula should recognise these characteristics and be designed to respond to needs that they create.

ARE PEOPLE REALLY CONFORMIST-BIASED? AN EMPIRICAL TEST AND A NEW MATHEMATICAL MODEL

Abstract According to an influential theory in cultural evolution, within-group similarity of culture is explained by a human ‘conformist-bias’, which is a hypothesized evolved predisposition to preferentially follow a member of the majority when acquiring ideas and behaviours. However, this notion has little support from social psychological research. In fact, a major theory in social psychology (Latane and Wolf (1981) argues for what is in effect a ‘nonconformist-bias’: by analogy to standard psychophysics they predict minority sources of influence to have relatively greater impact than majority sources. Here we present a new mathematical model and an experiment on social influence, both specifically designed to test these competing predictions. The results are in line with nonconformism. Finally, we discuss within-group similarity and suggest that it is not a general phenomenon but must be studied trait by trait.

Corpses, Maggots, Poodles and Rats: Emotional Selection Operating in Three Phases of Cultural Transmission of Urban Legends

In one conception of cultural evolution, the evolutionary success of cultural units that are transmitted from individual to individual is determined by forces of cultural selection. Here we argue that it is helpful to distinguish between several distinct phases of the transmission process in which cultural selection can operate. As a simple model we distinguish between a choose-to-receive phase, an encode-and-retrieve phase, and a choose-to-transmit phase. Proposed forces of cultural selection, such as various content biases, have typically been experimentally investigated only with respect to a single of these phases. Here we focus on emotional selection in cultural transmission of urban legends, which has previously been shown to operate in the choose-to-transmit phase. In a series of experiments we studied serial transmission of stories based on urban legends manipulated to be either high or low on disgusting content. One experiment used the classic serial reproduction methodology where only the encode-and-retrieve phase is involved. Another experiment instead involved choices of what material to read and what material to pass along. In both experiments, stories high on disgust were retained to a greater extent further down the chain. Thus, the prevalence of disgusting urban legends in America may be explained by emotional selection through a multitude of pathways.

Cross-Cultural Differences in Emotional Selection on Transmission of Information

Research on cultural transmission among Americans has established a bias for transmitting stories that have disgusting elements (such as exposure to rats and maggots). Conceived of as a cultural evolutionary force, this phenomenon is one type of emotional selection. In a series of online studies with Americans and Indians we investigate whether there are cultural differences in emotional selection, such that the transmission process favours different kinds of content in different countries. The first study found a bias for disgusting content (rats and maggots) among Americans but not among Indians. Four subsequent studies focused on how country interacts with kind of emotional content (disgusting vs. happy surprises and good news) in reactions to transmission of stories or information. Whereas Indian participants, compared to Americans, tended to be less interested in, and excited by, transmission of stories and news involving common disgust-elicitors (like rats), the opposite pattern held for transmission of happy surprises and good news (e.g., the opening of a new public facility). We discuss various possible explanations and implications.

Conformity : Definitions, Types, and Evolutionary Grounding

Conformity research in social psychology spans a century, but researchers have only adopted an evolutionary perspective in the past 25 years. This change has been driven by gene-culture coevolutionary models and research on nonhuman animals. In this chapter, we outline why there is a credible basis for an evolutionary explanation for widespread behavioral conformity in humans. However, we caution that not all conformity in humans is the same because conforming in a perceptual judgment task in the laboratory (as per the Asch paradigm) is not equivalent to being an unwitting participant in a behavioral field study. Moreover, conformity has not been consistently defined across research disciplines, which hampers a valid assessment of its evolutionary origins. Theoretical models within social psychology and the study of gene-culture coevolution are valuable tools in the quest for evolutionary explanations of conformist behavior; they have utilized gained insights while inspiring simulations and empirical tests. We propose the idea of incorporating individuals’ habit adherence into the models to advance the study of conformity. Conformity is a powerful force in human decision making and is best understood from an evolutionary perspective.

Theory of conformist social learning

Within theories of animal behavior and cultural evolution, social learning or social transmission is the act when an individual acquires a cultural element such as an idea, a behavior or a tool, by observing (or otherwise learning from) another individual (rather than by their own invention of the element, which in the same terminology is called individual learning). The individual that is observed is often called the cultural parent. If social learners choose cultural parents at random, the frequencies of cultural variants among social learners will not change in any systematic way. Theories of conformist social learning investigate the possibility that the choice of cultural parent may be biased toward the most common cultural variant, in which case cultural evolution will become directed toward cultural homogeneity among social learners. For any specific case, a bias for socially learning the most common variant may arise in several ways – e.g., if the common variant is more attractive in itself, or if it is favored by the current norms, i.e. through mechanisms that could just as well bias the choice toward some other variant than the currently most common one. Theories of conformist social learning make a much stronger claim: that biological evolution has favored an innate psychological bias to prefer cultural parents that exhibit common behaviors. This proposed innate bias is called a conformist bias.