How constraints on editing affects cultural evolution
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866917934504345600 |
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| author | Tchernichovski, Ofer Globerson, Eitan Harrison, Peter Jacoby, Nori |
| author_facet | Tchernichovski, Ofer Globerson, Eitan Harrison, Peter Jacoby, Nori |
| contents | When is it beneficial to constrain creativity? Creativity thrives with freedom, but when people collaborate to create artifacts, there is tension between giving individuals freedom to revise, and protecting prior achievements. To test how imposing constraints may affect collective creativity, we performed cultural evolution experiments where participants collaborated to create melodies and images in chains. With melodies, we found that limiting step size (number of musical notes that can be changed) improved pleasantness ratings for created tunes. Similar results were observed in cohorts of musicians, and with different selection regimes. In contrast, limiting step size in creating images consistently reduced pleasantness. These conflicting findings suggest that in domains such as music, where artifacts can be easily damaged, and where evolutionary outcomes are hard to foresee, collective creativity may benefit from imposing small step sizes. We discuss parallels with search algorithms and the evolution of conservative birdsong cultures. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_16694 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | How constraints on editing affects cultural evolution Tchernichovski, Ofer Globerson, Eitan Harrison, Peter Jacoby, Nori Neurons and Cognition When is it beneficial to constrain creativity? Creativity thrives with freedom, but when people collaborate to create artifacts, there is tension between giving individuals freedom to revise, and protecting prior achievements. To test how imposing constraints may affect collective creativity, we performed cultural evolution experiments where participants collaborated to create melodies and images in chains. With melodies, we found that limiting step size (number of musical notes that can be changed) improved pleasantness ratings for created tunes. Similar results were observed in cohorts of musicians, and with different selection regimes. In contrast, limiting step size in creating images consistently reduced pleasantness. These conflicting findings suggest that in domains such as music, where artifacts can be easily damaged, and where evolutionary outcomes are hard to foresee, collective creativity may benefit from imposing small step sizes. We discuss parallels with search algorithms and the evolution of conservative birdsong cultures. |
| title | How constraints on editing affects cultural evolution |
| topic | Neurons and Cognition |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16694 |