eprintid: 32304 rev_number: 16 eprint_status: archive userid: 1482 importid: 105 dir: disk0/00/03/23/04 datestamp: 2019-04-03 00:41:41 lastmod: 2023-06-08 07:26:59 status_changed: 2023-06-08 07:26:59 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Derex, Maxime creators_name: Bonnefon, Jean-François creators_name: Boyd, Robert creators_name: Mesoudi, Alex creators_idrefppn: 076374645 creators_idrefppn: 157498107 creators_affiliation: Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, 31015 Toulouse, France title: Causal understanding is not necessary for the improvement of culturally evolving technology ispublished: pub subjects: subjects_ECO abstract: Bows and arrows, houses and kayaks are just a few examples of the highly optimized tools that humans have produced and used to colonize new environments1,2. Because there is much evidence that humans’ cognitive abilities are unparalleled3,4, many believe that such technologies resulted from our superior causal reasoning abilities5,6,7. However, others have stressed that the high dimensionality of human technologies makes them very difficult to understand causally8. Instead, they argue that optimized technologies emerge through the retention of small improvements across generations without requiring understanding of how these technologies work1,9. Here we show that a physical artefact becomes progressively optimized across generations of social learners in the absence of explicit causal understanding. Moreover, we find that the transmission of causal models across generations has no noticeable effect on the pace of cultural evolution. The reason is that participants do not spontaneously create multidimensional causal theories but, instead, mainly produce simplistic models related to a salient dimension. Finally, we show that the transmission of these inaccurate theories constrains learners’ exploration and has downstream effects on their understanding. These results indicate that complex technologies need not result from enhanced causal reasoning but, instead, can emerge from the accumulation of improvements made across generations. date: 2019-04-01 date_type: published publisher: Macmillan Publishers Ltd id_number: 10.1038/s41562-019-0567-9 official_url: http://tse-fr.eu/pub/122902 faculty: tse divisions: tse language: en has_fulltext: FALSE doi: 10.1038/s41562-019-0567-9 view_date_year: 2019 full_text_status: none publication: Nature Human Behaviour volume: 3 number: n°3 pagerange: 446-452 refereed: TRUE issn: 2397-3374 oai_identifier: oai:tse-fr.eu:122902 harvester_local_overwrite: date harvester_local_overwrite: issn harvester_local_overwrite: faculty harvester_local_overwrite: publisher harvester_local_overwrite: number harvester_local_overwrite: pending harvester_local_overwrite: pagerange harvester_local_overwrite: creators_affiliation harvester_local_overwrite: id_number harvester_local_overwrite: doi harvester_local_overwrite: creators_idrefppn oai_lastmod: 2023-05-26T09:49:34Z oai_set: tse site: ut1 citation: Derex, Maxime, Bonnefon, Jean-François , Boyd, Robert and Mesoudi, Alex (2019) Causal understanding is not necessary for the improvement of culturally evolving technology. Nature Human Behaviour, 3 (n°3). pp. 446-452.