article · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
Theories of cultural evolution often suggest that technologies are passed on and refined through imitation rather than deep causal understanding, an assumption largely based on testing individuals on their own. A newly introduced evaluation method measures collective knowledge by permitting participants to review their peers' answers before choosing the best explanation. The approach was tested across farming communities in Morocco, Mali, and Ghana, where participants explained the causal processes behind local technologies. The results demonstrated that allowing individuals to evaluate answers given by their neighbours produced a more reliable collective answer than individual tests. This suggests a division of labour in how causal knowledge is retained, as community members who lack direct causal understanding can still recognise and select superior explanations. Consequently, groups hold greater collective knowledge than traditional testing methods suggest.
Understanding how local communities store and use technical knowledge is vital for assessing technological capacity. Standard evaluation methods risk dismissing local expertise by only testing individuals in isolation. By demonstrating that groups can accurately identify the best solutions among themselves, this work highlights the hidden collective intelligence within farming communities that conventional surveys miss.
The abstract does not indicate a commercial application pathway, as it focuses on an academic methodology for evaluating collective cultural knowledge.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
In the study of human cultural evolution, many theorists hold that technologies are transmitted and improved more through imitation rather than causal understanding. This view stems from results of studies that ask individuals in isolation about technologies they use, appearing to reveal a lack of causal understanding. Here, we introduce a new method to assess the knowledge of a group that allows individuals to view their neighbours' answers before deciding what the best answer might be from among those provided by the group. We asked individuals in three farming communities from Morocco (n = 203), Mali (n = 198) and Ghana (n = 120) to explain the causal processes behind local technologies. Our method reveals that when participants can review the answers provided by their peers, the most popular final answer is more reliable than when individuals provide answers in isolation. This indicates a division of labour in how causal knowledge is stored in the community-while most individuals may have poor causal knowledge, they recognize and defer to the best answer in the group. This shows that collectively the community is more knowledgeable than methods used up to now have indicated. This article is part of the theme issue 'The evolution of collective intelligence'.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2024.0453
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
