Modeled eating, not touching, licenses infant plant consumption

Evidence

More than 75% of the time the infants went for the fruit, not the fruit-like things, since they’d gotten the go-ahead via cultural learning. … As a check, the infants were also exposed to models putting the fruit or fruit-like things behind their ears (not in their mouths). In this case, the infants went for the fruit or fruit-like things in equal measure. It seems that plants are most interesting if you can eat them, but only if you have some cultural learning cues that they aren’t toxic. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 274

Categorization

• XREF: Shows content/social-learning rather than conformist-majority bias driving plant acceptance; relevant to distinguishing which learning bias operates when. — connects to: Infants only eat plants others have modeled as edible — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 273; Plants who take care of us provide models humans adopt for survival — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 823; Twentieth-century psychology long held that babies bond only through feeding — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 103 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Infants only eat plants others have modeled as edible #expands (0.95) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 273
• A puzzling pause in infant suckling has no feeding function #complicates (0.81) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 412
• Plants who take care of us provide models humans adopt for survival #corroborates (0.78) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 823
• Twentieth-century psychology long held that babies bond only through feeding #complicates (0.76) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 103
• Individual plant preferences are transmitted across generations through family memory #expands (0.75) — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 262
• Nuts function as high-protein forest food sustaining poor families through winter #exemplifies (0.74) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 59