The form of uncertainty affects selection for social learning

Matthew A Turner; Cristina Moya; Paul E Smaldino; James Holland Jones

doi:10.1017/ehs.2023.11

The form of uncertainty affects selection for social learning

Evol Hum Sci. 2023 May 22:5:e20. doi: 10.1017/ehs.2023.11. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Matthew A Turner^{1

2}, Cristina Moya³, Paul E Smaldino^{4

5

6

6}, James Holland Jones^{1

2

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA.
² Division of Social Sciences, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA.
³ Department of Anthropology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616 USA.
⁴ Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California at Merced, Merced, CA 95340 USA.
⁵ Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501 USA.
⁶ Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA.

Abstract

Social learning is a critical adaptation for dealing with different forms of variability. Uncertainty is a severe form of variability where the space of possible decisions or probabilities of associated outcomes are unknown. We identified four theoretically important sources of uncertainty: temporal environmental variability; payoff ambiguity; selection-set size; and effective lifespan. When these combine, it is nearly impossible to fully learn about the environment. We develop an evolutionary agent-based model to test how each form of uncertainty affects the evolution of social learning. Agents perform one of several behaviours, modelled as a multi-armed bandit, to acquire payoffs. All agents learn about behavioural payoffs individually through an adaptive behaviour-choice model that uses a softmax decision rule. Use of vertical and oblique payoff-biased social learning evolved to serve as a scaffold for adaptive individual learning - they are not opposite strategies. Different types of uncertainty had varying effects. Temporal environmental variability suppressed social learning, whereas larger selection-set size promoted social learning, even when the environment changed frequently. Payoff ambiguity and lifespan interacted with other uncertainty parameters. This study begins to explain how social learning can predominate despite highly variable real-world environments when effective individual learning helps individuals recover from learning outdated social information.

Keywords: agent-based modelling; cultural evolution; social learning; uncertainty.