Conformity kills

Hal Whitehead is Dalhousie's pre-eminentwhale researcher specializing in the study of the sperm whale.(Jennifer Modigliani Photo)

It’s not always easy being different. But is it actuallydangerous to be the same?

Dalhousie biologist Hal Whitehead thinks so, and he’s gotthe data to back it up. His recent paper, published inEvolution and Human Behavior, argues that promotingindividual learning and innovation over cultural conformityisn’t just valuable to a society’s success, it may beessential to its very survival.

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

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

The paper was co-written with Peter Richerson of the Universityof California, “the guy who knows everything aboutculture,” according to Dr. Whitehead. The pair used amathematical model to explore what happens to human societies whenthey adopt largely conformist behaviour in times of stability. Itsuggests that without significant individual innovation, societiesfail to respond to small but incremental changes in theirsurrounding environment. By the time they realize the need forchange, 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 studyingwhales. But the research tangent was actually inspired by hisdesire to better understand whale culture. “Culturalevolution, I think, helps explains some of the anomalies in whalebehaviour, just as it explains human behaviour,” he says,speculating that cultural conformity may be what led pilot whalepopulations to disappear from the North Pacific.

The conformity model applies best to isolated societies, withthe authors believing it can help in part explain the disappearanceof the Norse from Greenland and the collapse of Mayan civilization.However, it’s much more difficult to apply the model in ourinterconnected modern world where ideas and innovations are oftenshared quickly between cultures. Still, Dr. Whitehead believesthere are valuable lessons to take from it, whether for companieslooking to maintain their market advantage, professors trying tocreate a positive classroom environment, or a global society facingthe challenge of climate change.

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

LINK: Evolution and Human Behaviour