Reading focus
Syllabus: How Are Cultures Learned, Transmitted and Changed?
Use the field study to ask how model choice could be measured outside a laboratory.
Why you’re reading it. Apply the strategy framework while distinguishing stated advice choices from observed learning.
A question to consider. Design a follow-up observation that could establish whether people acquire a new fishing technique from the experts they nominated.
Why this reading
Henrich and Broesch study whom people in three Fijian villages would approach for advice about fishing, growing yams and medicinal plants. The study connects selective social learning with the relationships through which knowledge could travel, making the choice of a source an empirical question.
Before you read
A learning bias is a tendency to favor some information or models over others; it need not be a mistake or a conscious rule. Network ties are not independent observations: several people may nominate the same expert, and relationships can be reciprocal. The analysis accounts for this dependence.
Read for
- Distinguish nominations of knowledgeable people from nominations of people to consult, and examine how these measures were collected at different times.
- Compare the patterns across domains and consider how skill, age, gender and opportunities for contact could each shape a nomination.
Consider afterwards
- Would an expert who receives many advice nominations necessarily be responsible for most actual learning? What observation could test this?
- How could two people choose the same model for different reasons?
Editorial context
The observations concern particular villages on Yasawa, not a representative sample of Fiji. Advice nominations indicate intended choices rather than directly observed transmission events. Evidence for selecting knowledgeable models does not by itself establish a genetically evolved decision rule or the complete course of childhood learning. The authors’ interpretation of adaptive biases should be assessed against access to models, domain differences and the distinction between perceived and measured competence.