Network Connectivity Dynamics,Cognitive Biases,and the Evolution of Cultural Diversity in Round-Robin Interactive Micro-Societies

The distribution of cultural variants in a population is shaped by both neutral evolutionary dynamics and by selection pressures. The temporal dynamics of social network connectivity, that is, the order in which individuals in a population interact with each other, has been largely unexplored. In this paper, we investigate how, in a fully connected social network, connectivity dynamics, alone and in interaction with different cognitive biases, affect the evolution of cultural variants. Using agent-based computer simulations, we manipulate population connectivity dynamics (early, mid, and late full-population connectivity); content bias, or a preference for high-quality variants; coordination bias, or whether agents tend to use self-produced variants (egocentric bias), or to switch to variants observed in others (allocentric bias); and memory size, or the number of items that agents can store in their memory. We show that connectivity dynamics affect the time-course of variant spread, with lower connectivity slowing down convergence of the population onto a single cultural variant. We also show that, compared to a neutral evolutionary model, content bias accelerates convergence and amplifies the effects of connectivity dynamics, while larger memory size and coordination bias, especially egocentric bias, slow down convergence. Furthermore, connectivity dynamics affect the frequency of high-quality variants (adaptiveness), with late connectivity populations showing bursts of rapid change in adaptiveness followed by periods of relatively slower change, and early connectivity populations following a single-peak evolutionary dynamic. We evaluate our simulations against existing data collected from previous experiments and show how our model reproduces the empirical patterns of convergence.     

When Winning is Everything: The Relationship between Competitive Worldviews and Job Applicant Faking

Job applicant faking, that is, consciously misrepresenting information during the selection process, is ubiquitous and is a threat to the usefulness of various selection tools. Understanding antecedents of faking is thus of utmost importance. Recent theories of faking highlight the central role of various forms of competition for understanding why faking occurs. Drawing on these theories, we suggest that the more applicants adhere to competitive worldviews (CWs), that is, the more they believe that the social world is a competitive, Darwinian‐type of struggle over scarce resources, the more likely they are to fake in employment interviews. We tested our hypothesis in three independent studies that were conducted in five different countries. Results show that CWs are strongly associated with faking, independently of job applicants’ cultural and economic context. More specifically, applicants’ CWs explain faking intentions and self‐reported past faking above and beyond the Dark Triad of personality (Study 1), competitiveness and the six facets of conscientiousness (Study 2). Also, when faking is measured using a response randomisation technique to control for social desirability, faking is more prevalent among applicants with strong vs. less strong CWs (Study 3). Taken together, this research demonstrates that competition is indeed strongly associated with undesirable applicant behaviors.