For my dissertation research, I ran an "experimental microsociety" study, which is a laboratory method of approximating cultural dynamics in miniature using groups of participants. In a typical experimental microsociety design, participants complete some sort of task under various conditions, and differences in their performance under these conditions can help us to understand aspects of cultural transmission (how people learn culture) that are otherwise difficult to study.
My research was designed to evaluate the hypothesis that imitation is needed for culture to accumulate, producing advances in technology, for example. At the time I was designing my study, no one had tested this idea empirically (although by the time I had received funding, an innovative article had appeared doing just that -- Caldwell and Millen, 2009, Psychological Science). Caldwell and Millen tested the "imitation hypothesis" by asking participants to construct paper airplanes, and manipulating their access to social information. They report that imitation was not needed to generate cumulative culture: groups performed equally well whether they had been able to imitate or not.
I was intrigued by this result, but I wondered what difference a more complex task might make. Previous work has demonstrated that social learning, and in particular imitation, tends to be employed when people are unsure about the best way to proceed. So, in my research, I wanted to develop a task that would be somewhat difficult and unfamiliar. I asked participants to build weight-bearing devices out of weaving reed and modeling clay. Each participant had 15 minutes in which to make a device, and I quantified his or her success by adding weights to the device until it failed (sometimes spectacularly so!). What I found was that imitation is required for cumulative cultural evolution. The difference in our findings appears to be due to the difference in tasks, the details of which I am exploring in my new Human Nature article (Wasielewski, 2014).
Here are some examples of devices that participants made:
My research was designed to evaluate the hypothesis that imitation is needed for culture to accumulate, producing advances in technology, for example. At the time I was designing my study, no one had tested this idea empirically (although by the time I had received funding, an innovative article had appeared doing just that -- Caldwell and Millen, 2009, Psychological Science). Caldwell and Millen tested the "imitation hypothesis" by asking participants to construct paper airplanes, and manipulating their access to social information. They report that imitation was not needed to generate cumulative culture: groups performed equally well whether they had been able to imitate or not.
I was intrigued by this result, but I wondered what difference a more complex task might make. Previous work has demonstrated that social learning, and in particular imitation, tends to be employed when people are unsure about the best way to proceed. So, in my research, I wanted to develop a task that would be somewhat difficult and unfamiliar. I asked participants to build weight-bearing devices out of weaving reed and modeling clay. Each participant had 15 minutes in which to make a device, and I quantified his or her success by adding weights to the device until it failed (sometimes spectacularly so!). What I found was that imitation is required for cumulative cultural evolution. The difference in our findings appears to be due to the difference in tasks, the details of which I am exploring in my new Human Nature article (Wasielewski, 2014).
Here are some examples of devices that participants made: