Conformist transmission lets learners aggregate dispersed wisdom rapidly

Evidence

One place has 40 diners, six have 10 diners, and three are empty, except for the waitstaff. If you would pick the restaurant with 40 people (out of the 100 you’ve observed) more than 40% of the time then you are using conformist transmission—you are strongly inclined to copy the most common trait—the majority or the plurality. … Evolutionary models, which are built to mathematically capture the logic of natural selection, predict that learners ought to use what’s called conformist transmission to tackle a variety of learning problems. As long as individual learning, intuitions, direct experience, and other cultural learning mechanisms tend to produce adaptive practices, beliefs, and motivations, then conformist transmission can help learners aggregate the information that is distributed across a group. For example, suppose long experience fishing will tend to cause anglers to prefer the blood knot to other potential knots (for connecting monofilament line) because the blood knot is objectively the best. However, individual experiences will vary, so suppose that long experience alone leads to only a 50% chance of an angler converging on the blood knot, a 30% chance of using the fisherman’s knot, and a 20% chance of using one of five other knots. A conformist learner can exploit this situation and jump directly to the blood knot without experience. Thus, the wisdom of crowds is built into our psychology. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 179

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise operational definition: copying the most common trait more often than its frequency would predict (40/40 rule), distinguished from model-based cues.
• XREF: connects to: Conformist transmission is triggered by difficulty, uncertainty, and stakes — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 181; Conformist transmission occurs across many social-learning species. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 1122; Learning from five models beats learning from one in a controlled transmission chain — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 698 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Conformism stays adaptive under rapid change though heavy social learning does not #expands (0.90)
• Conformist transmission evolves robustly across far more conditions than heavy social learning does #expands (0.85) — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 65
• Conformity functions as adaptive social coordination, not weakness #expands (0.75)