Individual Learning and Innovation Essential to Society's Survival

Newswise — It’s not always easy being different. But is it actually dangerous to be the same?

Dalhousie University biologist Hal Whitehead thinks so, and he’s got the data to back it up. His recent paper, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, argues that promoting individual learning and innovation over cultural conformity isn’t just valuable to a society’s success, it may be essential to its very survival.

“In any population, you should have a mixture of what we call ‘social learning,’ which is learning from others, and individual learning, which is figuring things out for yourself,” he explains. “We often fall back on social learning because it’s easier. Copying what someone else is doing or getting them to teach you is simpler than doing it yourself from scratch.

“The problem is that when everyone is learning from each other, they lose track of what’s going on in their surroundings. No one is paying attention to them.”

The paper was co-written with Peter Richerson of the University of California, “the guy who knows everything about culture,” according to Dr. Whitehead. The pair used a mathematical model to explore what happens to human societies when they adopt largely conformist behaviour in times of stability. It suggests that without significant individual innovation, societies fail to respond to small but incremental changes in their surrounding environment. By the time they realize the need for change, it’s often too late to do so.

Human behavioural evolution is new territory for Dr. Whitehead, who can usually be found on the open seas tracking and studying whales. But the research tangent was actually inspired by his desire to better understand whale culture. “Cultural evolution, I think, helps explains some of the anomalies in whale behaviour, just as it explains human behaviour,” he says, speculating that cultural conformity may be what led pilot whale populations to disappear from the North Pacific.

The conformity model applies best to isolated societies, with the authors believing it can help in part explain the disappearance of the Norse from Greenland and the collapse of Mayan civilization. However, it’s much more difficult to apply the model in our interconnected modern world where ideas and innovations are often shared quickly between cultures. Still, Dr. Whitehead believes there are valuable lessons to take from it, whether for companies looking to maintain their market advantage, professors trying to create a positive classroom environment, or a global society facing the challenge of climate change.

“Keeping innovative people around, those who think differently and for themselves, is crucial,” says Dr. Whitehead. “It’s really important that we as a global society encourage innovation and free thinking, getting people to take awareness of their environment and be willing to take risks, even if they’re not always right.”