In bifocal stance theory (BST), rituals and traditions are more likely to appear when end goals are less salient whereas instrumental stances appear when there is a causally transparent end goal. Copying fidelity is weaker in the latter, leading to innovation. This is an excellent idea. Here I want to talk about a few aspects that I think remain ambiguous or underdeveloped in BST based on what we know in the psychology and neuroscience of learning and decision making.
BST can be directly paralleled with the literature of goals and habits where a distinction is made between a conscious system that controls behavior in anticipation of goals, and a relatively unconscious system that controls habits which are automatically performed in the presence of certain cues, and independently of the current goal. In this framework, the goal of a social learner agent should be to observe, attend, and copy in accordance with whether she believes the observed actions to be goal-directed or habitual. Attentional resources are directed to causal structure and end goals in the former, but to each step in a chain of actions in the latter.
As proposed, a general issue with BST is the lack of specification of the conditions under which a social learner will ascribe causality and end goals to an observed behavior. To ascribe intentionality to other people's behavior, the learner needs independent evidence that the person is indeed performing the action in a goal-directed manner, which is not possible to obtain without knowing what the person will do when the causal link between the behavior and the goal is degraded, or the value of the goal modified (Perez & Dickinson, Reference Perez and Dickinson2020). These belief and desire criteria were first proposed by one of the authors of the paper (Heyes & Dickinson, Reference Heyes and Dickinson1990), but are not considered in BST. Although it remains unclear how these criteria may be applied in social, non-controlled settings, finding natural experiments where the criteria could be applied should help elucidating the mapping between the features of certain sequences of behaviors and instrumental or ritual stances.
BST establishes a direct link between instrumental stances and innovation and proposes that they should be more likely to be observed the more transparent an end goal is. The experimental evidence suggests that when a behavioral sequence is continuously performed under similar conditions, attention to the goal diminishes and actions transition will be automatically performed, or become habitual. At this point, attention shifts toward the actions and so should be copying by others (Thrailkill, Trask, Vidal, Alcalá, & Bouton, Reference Thrailkill, Trask, Vidal, Alcalá and Bouton2018). It seems, therefore, that BST would predict at the same time continuous innovation and stable tradition, which is at variance with the fact that continuous innovation seems to be the rule, at least in modern societies (Schumpeter, Reference Schumpeter2014 [1942]).
Recent experiments in animals seem to agree with the hypothesis of BST that the salience of end goals should be critical for acquiring an instrumental stance. When animals are habitized by training them for long periods of time until their attention is shifted away from the goal, changing the goal restores goal-directed behavior (Bouton, Broomer, Rey, & Thrailkill, Reference Bouton, Broomer, Rey and Thrailkill2020). Although changing the goal altogether is a somewhat extreme manipulation, it is not difficult to anticipate that random variations in the outcome of a stable behavior should produce changes in the outcome and reestablish instrumental stances that might have gone away once there was no variation in the consequences of the behavioral sequence. For example, a population might have been innovative in the creation of a canoe as the instrumental stance is prompted when there is significant trial and error at the beginning of the endeavor. As the canoe quality becomes optimal, there is little variation in the outcome and the actions performed, which shifts attention toward actions, prompting high-fidelity copying. Random variations in the outcome may thus lead attention to be directed back to the goal, and another period of instrumental copying should follow.
As presented, BST leaves as an outstanding issue the optimal temporal resolution by which behavior should be analyzed by a social learner. This opens a myriad of other issues which have been relatively well studied in psychology and neuroscience, such as the sensitivity to different reward schedules. It is now well established that these schedules can affect whether behavior is goal-directed or habitual. More precisely, the evidence suggests that the molar aspects of behavior seem to be considered by people when deciding to act on the environment in a goal-directed manner and that the molecular aspects are more important for behaving habitually (Perez & Dickinson, Reference Perez and Dickinson2020; Pérez & Soto, Reference Pérez and Soto2020). So far, I know of no experiment in which molar and molecular aspects are encouraged by experimental manipulations, but it is likely that they will also play a role in how observers ascribe causality to actions and therefore imitate (copy actions) or emulate (copy intentions to obtain a goal).
Whether people imitate or emulate does not seem to depend only on the existence of causality and end goals, as emphasized in BST, but on aspects of the environment which are outside the control of the agent. Recently, Charpentier, Iigaya, and O'Doherty (Reference Charpentier, Iigaya and O'Doherty2020) have demonstrated how the conditions of the environment prompt human participants to arbitrate between imitation and emulation depending on the reliability of each strategy. Imitation is more likely to be deployed when the environment is uncertain, such as when the outcome of a given behavior is difficult to predict. This is another critical factor in the neuroscience literature which BST should consider in further developments of the theory.
BST is an innovative and creative approach including aspects of anthropology, psychology, and ecology. Incorporating some of the topics discussed here should help it evolve into an even more comprehensive theory of cultural evolution.
In bifocal stance theory (BST), rituals and traditions are more likely to appear when end goals are less salient whereas instrumental stances appear when there is a causally transparent end goal. Copying fidelity is weaker in the latter, leading to innovation. This is an excellent idea. Here I want to talk about a few aspects that I think remain ambiguous or underdeveloped in BST based on what we know in the psychology and neuroscience of learning and decision making.
BST can be directly paralleled with the literature of goals and habits where a distinction is made between a conscious system that controls behavior in anticipation of goals, and a relatively unconscious system that controls habits which are automatically performed in the presence of certain cues, and independently of the current goal. In this framework, the goal of a social learner agent should be to observe, attend, and copy in accordance with whether she believes the observed actions to be goal-directed or habitual. Attentional resources are directed to causal structure and end goals in the former, but to each step in a chain of actions in the latter.
As proposed, a general issue with BST is the lack of specification of the conditions under which a social learner will ascribe causality and end goals to an observed behavior. To ascribe intentionality to other people's behavior, the learner needs independent evidence that the person is indeed performing the action in a goal-directed manner, which is not possible to obtain without knowing what the person will do when the causal link between the behavior and the goal is degraded, or the value of the goal modified (Perez & Dickinson, Reference Perez and Dickinson2020). These belief and desire criteria were first proposed by one of the authors of the paper (Heyes & Dickinson, Reference Heyes and Dickinson1990), but are not considered in BST. Although it remains unclear how these criteria may be applied in social, non-controlled settings, finding natural experiments where the criteria could be applied should help elucidating the mapping between the features of certain sequences of behaviors and instrumental or ritual stances.
BST establishes a direct link between instrumental stances and innovation and proposes that they should be more likely to be observed the more transparent an end goal is. The experimental evidence suggests that when a behavioral sequence is continuously performed under similar conditions, attention to the goal diminishes and actions transition will be automatically performed, or become habitual. At this point, attention shifts toward the actions and so should be copying by others (Thrailkill, Trask, Vidal, Alcalá, & Bouton, Reference Thrailkill, Trask, Vidal, Alcalá and Bouton2018). It seems, therefore, that BST would predict at the same time continuous innovation and stable tradition, which is at variance with the fact that continuous innovation seems to be the rule, at least in modern societies (Schumpeter, Reference Schumpeter2014 [1942]).
Recent experiments in animals seem to agree with the hypothesis of BST that the salience of end goals should be critical for acquiring an instrumental stance. When animals are habitized by training them for long periods of time until their attention is shifted away from the goal, changing the goal restores goal-directed behavior (Bouton, Broomer, Rey, & Thrailkill, Reference Bouton, Broomer, Rey and Thrailkill2020). Although changing the goal altogether is a somewhat extreme manipulation, it is not difficult to anticipate that random variations in the outcome of a stable behavior should produce changes in the outcome and reestablish instrumental stances that might have gone away once there was no variation in the consequences of the behavioral sequence. For example, a population might have been innovative in the creation of a canoe as the instrumental stance is prompted when there is significant trial and error at the beginning of the endeavor. As the canoe quality becomes optimal, there is little variation in the outcome and the actions performed, which shifts attention toward actions, prompting high-fidelity copying. Random variations in the outcome may thus lead attention to be directed back to the goal, and another period of instrumental copying should follow.
As presented, BST leaves as an outstanding issue the optimal temporal resolution by which behavior should be analyzed by a social learner. This opens a myriad of other issues which have been relatively well studied in psychology and neuroscience, such as the sensitivity to different reward schedules. It is now well established that these schedules can affect whether behavior is goal-directed or habitual. More precisely, the evidence suggests that the molar aspects of behavior seem to be considered by people when deciding to act on the environment in a goal-directed manner and that the molecular aspects are more important for behaving habitually (Perez & Dickinson, Reference Perez and Dickinson2020; Pérez & Soto, Reference Pérez and Soto2020). So far, I know of no experiment in which molar and molecular aspects are encouraged by experimental manipulations, but it is likely that they will also play a role in how observers ascribe causality to actions and therefore imitate (copy actions) or emulate (copy intentions to obtain a goal).
Whether people imitate or emulate does not seem to depend only on the existence of causality and end goals, as emphasized in BST, but on aspects of the environment which are outside the control of the agent. Recently, Charpentier, Iigaya, and O'Doherty (Reference Charpentier, Iigaya and O'Doherty2020) have demonstrated how the conditions of the environment prompt human participants to arbitrate between imitation and emulation depending on the reliability of each strategy. Imitation is more likely to be deployed when the environment is uncertain, such as when the outcome of a given behavior is difficult to predict. This is another critical factor in the neuroscience literature which BST should consider in further developments of the theory.
BST is an innovative and creative approach including aspects of anthropology, psychology, and ecology. Incorporating some of the topics discussed here should help it evolve into an even more comprehensive theory of cultural evolution.
Financial support
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Conflict of interest
None.