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Two success-biased social learning strategies

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  • Baldini, Ryan

Abstract

I compare the evolutionary dynamics of two success-biased social learning strategies, which, by definition, use the success of others to inform one’s social learning decisions. The first, “Compare Means†, causes a learner to adopt cultural variants with highest mean payoff in her sample. The second, “Imitate the Best†, causes a learner to imitate the single most successful individual in her sample. I summarize conditions under which each strategy performs well or poorly, and investigate their evolution via a gene-culture coevolutionary model. Despite the adaptive appeal of these strategies, both encounter conditions under which they systematically perform worse than simply imitating at random. Compare Means performs worst when the optimal cultural variant is usually at high frequency, while Imitate the Best performs worst when suboptimal variants sometimes produce high payoffs. The extent to which it is optimal to use success-biased social learning depends strongly on the payoff distributions and environmental conditions that human social learners face.

Suggested Citation

  • Baldini, Ryan, 2013. "Two success-biased social learning strategies," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 43-49.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:86:y:2013:i:c:p:43-49
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2013.03.005
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    1. Apesteguia, Jose & Huck, Steffen & Oechssler, Jorg, 2007. "Imitation--theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 217-235, September.
    2. Schlag, Karl H., 1999. "Which one should I imitate?," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 493-522, May.
    3. Kobayashi, Yutaka & Aoki, Kenichi, 2012. "Innovativeness, population size and cumulative cultural evolution," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 38-47.
    4. Baldini, Ryan, 2012. "Success-biased social learning: Cultural and evolutionary dynamics," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 222-228.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Clark, Matt & Andrews, Jeffrey & Hillis, Vicken, 2022. "A quantitative application of diffusion of innovations for modeling the spread of conservation behaviors," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 473(C).

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