Chater and Christiansen argue that social tinkering, the directed process of “gradual accumulation of ad hoc innovations to the social rules that coordinate behavior in response to immediate challenges,” (p. 1) plays a central role in cultural evolution and cultural complexity. They propose that people come up with innovative solutions to address momentary problems, and cultural complexity is achieved through a 6-stage sequence, where these solutions are replicated and extended when confronting future challenges. Chater and Christiansen’s proposal distinguishes social tinkering from undirected natural selection that guides biological evolution and is well grounded in psychological and anthropological evidence. Nevertheless, further exploration is needed to allow for the contextual factors that can affect adults and children’s problem-solving and create variations in social tinkering.

First, the presence of informants in the environment and selectivity in information uptake could lead to variations in devising solutions for momentary problems. Although many technological advancements that have a long-lasting impact stem from solutions to momentary problems, it is not the case that individuals devise solutions in complete solitude; rather, it is much more efficient to seek guidance from more experienced others. Research suggests that children look for help from adults when they experience uncertainty (Coughlin et al., Reference Coughlin, Hembacher, Lyons and Ghetti2015; Hembacher, deMayo, & Frank, Reference Hembacher, deMayo and Frank2020) or a gap in knowledge (Aguiar, Stoess, & Taylor, Reference Aguiar, Stoess and Taylor2012), or hope to achieve certain goals (Molinaro et al., Reference Molinaro, Cogliati Dezza, Bühler, Moutsiana and Sharot2023). They also actively ask questions to acquire factual and explanatory knowledge and to solve problems (Chouinard, Harris, & Maratsos, Reference Chouinard, Harris and Maratsos2007; Frazier, Gelman, & Wellman, Reference Frazier, Gelman and Wellman2009). Importantly, children are strategic when they decide from whom to ask and display a preference for learning from familiar individuals over unfamiliar ones (Corriveau & Harris, Reference Corriveau and Harris2009), members of their social group (Baron & Dunham, Reference Baron and Dunham2015), and more experienced individuals (Harris et al., Reference Harris, Koenig, Corriveau and Jaswal2018). They also weigh these cues differently depending on the domain of the to-be-learned information (Jaswal & Neely, Reference Jaswal and Neely2006). Evidence of children’s selective help-seeking suggests that when there are multiple solutions to one problem, the solution that is eventually enacted may vary based on the informants or help available at that moment and the selective strategy that people take. By implication, in copying and tinkering with non-social behavior (Stage 2), whether a previous innovation or skill is successfully copied, improved, or accumulated depends on the relation between the knowledge states of the learner and the social and epistemic characteristics of the social other. Moreover, because learners display such selectivity, the tinkering order proposed may not be required. Learning from a social other could occur prior to non-social tinkering – or in some instances, even replace it. In other words, the stage of non-social tinkering (Stage 1) is not necessary to learn a non-social skill or behavior.

In addition, social tinkering varies based on cultural differences and interactions between cultures and societies. Whereas Chater and Christiansen argue that cultural evolution emerges from bottom-up changes based on local innovations (p. 5), this argument ignores the importance of top-down shifts in larger societies in driving cultural change. For example, consider the relation between shyness and academic outcomes across three cohorts of children in Shanghai, China (Chen et al., Reference Chen, Cen, Li and He2005). Whereas shyness was associated with positive academic outcomes in 1990, the relation disappeared in 1998, and shyness was associated with negative school problems in 2002. Such changes could be related to top-down socioeconomic changes toward market economy and direct exposure to Western values, which emphasize assertiveness and active exploration in the 1990s in China. In addition, Xu and colleagues (Reference Xu, Nissel, Cui, Harris and Corriveauunder review) found that children’s openness to revising their ontological beliefs about unobservable Christian entities (e.g., God and angels) depended on the religious profile of the society they lived in. Christian children from China were more likely to deny possibilities for belief revision with age, whereas there were no age-related differences in secular Chinese children. In contrast, Christian children in the US did not exhibit age-related changes in belief revision, but secular US children were more open to revising their beliefs with age. This is probably because Christian Chinese children, exposed to the mainstream secular discourse, grew more salient religious identities and became more confident in their beliefs with age. By contrast, in the predominantly Christian but religiously diverse US, secular children, who were exposed to a wider range of views with age, became more receptive to information that could challenge their existing beliefs. Taken together, these two examples suggest that the same cultural value could lead to different social-cognitive outcomes in different sociocultural contexts. They also highlight that larger-scale cultural exchanges might be as important for cultural evolution as local, bottom-up processes for both social and non-social behaviors.

In summary, social tinkering does not lead to cultural complexity and culture evolution through a linear process. On the individual level, the availability of more experienced others and selectivity in help-seeking leads to variability in the order and outcomes of social tinkering. Moreover, it is important to recognize that cultures do not exist in isolation. Such interactions between cultures can lead to top-down changes that shape the evolution of particular social conventions and cultural values. Both types of contextual factors suggest a multifaceted path of cultural evolution that is less linear than the proposed stage theory.