SEMINAR: A (simple) social selection heuristic can explain adaptive cultural evolution

Research has tended to focus on the top-down cognitive-biases that drive cultural evolution, with little consideration of bottom-up social interactional processes. In this talk I’ll present evidence (experimental & computational) that cognitive-biases plus social interaction are critical to the evolution of functionally adaptive human communication systems, and cumulative cultural evolution more generally. I’ll argue that a conservative Egocentric-bias preserves variation by inhibiting the adoption of the signals produced by others during an interactive communication game. An opportunistic Content-bias encourages signal adoption on the basis of the intrinsic qualities of the signals produced by others; if the signal encountered is superior to previously used signals it is adopted. Together, an Egocentric-bias, a Content-bias plus social interaction maximises the chance that a population will converge on an optimal set of signals.