A New Modulator of Cultural Transmission: Congruence Between Learning and Onward Transmission Contexts

The adoption of cultural variants by learners is affected by multiple factors including the prestige of the model and the frequency and value of the different variants. However, little is known about what affects onward cultural transmission, or the choice of variants that models produce to pass on to new learners. This study investigated the effects of congruence between two contexts on this choice: the one in which we learn variants and the one in which we transmit them later on. We hypothesized that when we are placed in a particular context, we will be more likely to produce (and therefore transmit) variants that we learned in that same context. In particular, we tested the effect of a social contextual aspect: the relationship between model and learner. Participants learned two variant methods to solve a puzzle, one from an “expert” (in an expert-to-novice context) and one from a “peer” (in a peer-to-peer context). They were then asked to transmit one variant onward, either to a “novice” (in a new expert-to-novice context) or to another “peer” (in a new peer-to-peer context). Participants were, overall, more likely to transmit the variant learned from an expert, and this effect can be attributed to model-prestige bias. However, a significant interaction between the context of learning and the context of onward transmission supported our hypothesis: the expert’s variant advantage was clear when transmitting to a novice, but it disappeared when transmitting to another peer. We conclude that a context-congruence effect impacts cultural transmission.