Prestige-biased social learning: current evidence and outstanding questions

This is the final version. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Cultural evolution theory posits that a major factor in human ecological success is our high-fidelity and selective social learning, which permits the accumulation of adaptive knowledge and skills over successive generations. One way to acquire adaptive social information is by preferentially copying competent individuals within a valuable domain (success bias). However, competence within a domain is often difficult or impossible to directly assess. Almost 20 years ago, Henrich and Gil-White (H&GW) suggested that people use indirect cues of success (e.g., differential levels of attention paid to models by other social learners) as adaptive short-cuts to select models from whom to learn. They called this use of indirect markers of success prestige bias. In this review, we re-visit H&GW’s proposal, examining the evidence amassed since for the adaptiveness and use of prestige bias in humans. First, we briefly outline H&GW’s theory. Second, we analyse whether prestige is associated with competence within valuable domains, which is a crucial assumption underlying the adaptiveness of prestige bias. Third, we discuss prestige cues that people use to infer success (e.g., the amount of voluntary deference and attention received by models). Fourth, we examine the evidence for and against the use of prestige bias in human adults and children. Finally, we point out limitations in the current literature and present new avenues for research on prestige bias.Leverhulme Trus

Prestige does not affect the cultural transmission of novel controversial arguments in an online transmission chain experiment

This is the final version. Available on open access from Brill via the DOI in this recordCultural evolutionary theories define prestige as social rank that is freely conferred on individuals possessing superior knowledge or skill, in order to gain opportunities to learn from such individuals. Consequently, information provided by prestigious individuals should be more memorable, and hence more likely to be culturally transmitted, than information from non-prestigious sources, particularly for novel, controversial arguments about which preexisting opinions are absent or weak. It has also been argued that this effect extends beyond the prestigious individual's relevant domain of expertise. We tested whether the prestige and relevance of the sources of novel, controversial arguments affected the transmission of those arguments, independently of their content. In a four-generation linear transmission chain experiment, British participants (N = 192) recruited online read two conflicting arguments in favour of or against the replacement of textbooks by computer tablets in schools. Each of the two conflicting arguments was associated with one of three sources with different levels of prestige and relevance (high prestige, high relevance; high prestige, low relevance; low prestige, low relevance). Participants recalled the pro-tablets and anti-tablets arguments associated with each source and their recall was then passed to the next participant within their chain. Contrary to our predictions, we did not find a reliable effect of either the prestige or relevance of the sources of information on transmission fidelity. We discuss whether the lack of a reliable effect of prestige on recall might be a consequence of differences between how prestige operates in this experiment and in everyday life.Leverhulme Trus

When do people prefer dominant over prestigious political leaders?

This is the final version. Available on open access from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this recordData availability: Datasets and data analyses are available from https://github.com/AngelVJimenez/Preferences_Dominant_Prestigious_LeadersPrevious research has sought to explain the rise of right-wing populist leaders in terms of the evolutionary framework of dominance and prestige. In this framework, dominance is defined as high social rank acquired via coercion and fear, and prestige is defined as high social rank acquired via competence and admiration. Previous studies have shown that right-wing populist leaders are rated as more dominant than non-populist leaders, and right-wing populist/dominant leaders are favoured in times of economic uncertainty and intergroup conflict. In this paper, we explore and critique this application of dominance–prestige to politics. First, we argue that the dominance–prestige framework, originally developed to explain inter-personal relationships within small-scale societies characterised by face-to-face interaction, does not straightforwardly extend to large-scale democratic societies which have frequent anonymous interaction and complex ingroup–outgroup dynamics. Second, we show that economic uncertainty and intergroup conflict predict a preference not only for dominant leaders, but also for prestigious leaders. Third, we show that perceptions of leaders as dominant or prestigious are not fixed, and depend on the political ideology of the perceiver: people view leaders who share their ideology as prestigious, and those who oppose their ideology as dominant, whether that ideology is liberal or conservative. Fourth, we show that political ideology is a stronger predictor than economic uncertainty of preference for Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election, contradicting previous findings that link Trump's success to economic uncertainty. We conclude by suggesting that, if economic uncertainty does not directly affect preferences for right-wing populist leaders, other features of their discourse such as higher emotionality might explain their success.Leverhulme Trus

The Cultural Transmission of Prestige and Dominance Social Rank Cues: an Experimental Simulation

This is the final version. Available from Springer via the DOI in this record.Below is the link to the dataset and preview of the experiment, and Dataset (CSV, 133KB) - process_raw_data_included.csv can be found in the Electronic Supplementary Material section Preview of the experiment: https://exetercles.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_071cfHiCY9qBEkB.Informal social hierarchies within small human groups are argued to be based on prestige, dominance, or a combination of the two (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Prestige-based hierarchies entail the ordering of individuals by the admiration and respect they receive from others due to their competence within valued domains. This type of hierarchy provides benefits for subordinates such as social learning opportunities and both private and public goods. In contrast, dominance-based hierarchies entail the ordering of individuals by their capacity to win fights, and coerce or intimidate others. This type of hierarchy produces costs in subordinates due to its aggressive and intimidating nature. Given the benefits and costs associated with these types of social hierarchies for subordinates, we hypothesised that prestige and dominance cues are better recalled and transmitted than social rank cues that do not elicit high prestige or dominance associations (i.e. medium social rank cues). Assuming that for the majority of the population who are not already at the top of the social hierarchy it is more important to avoid the costs of dominance-based hierarchies than to obtain the benefits of prestige-based hierarchies, we further hypothesised that dominance cues are better transmitted than prestige cues. We conducted a recall-based transmission chain experiment with 30 chains of four generations each (N = 120). Participants read and recalled descriptions of prestigious, dominant, and medium social rank footballers, and their recall was passed to the next participant within their chain. As predicted, we found that both prestige cues and dominance cues were better transmitted than medium social rank cues. However, we did not find support for our prediction of the better transmission of dominance cues than prestige cues. We discuss whether the results might be explained by a specific social-rank content transmission bias or by a more general emotional content transmission bias.University of Exete