How constraints on editing affects cultural evolution

TL;DR

This study investigates how constraints on editing, such as limiting step size, influence collective creativity in music and image creation, revealing domain-specific effects on the quality of produced artifacts.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence that constraining editing steps can enhance or impair creativity depending on the domain, highlighting the importance of domain-specific constraints.

Findings

Limiting step size improved melody pleasantness.

Restricting editing in images reduced pleasantness.

Constraints have domain-dependent effects on creativity.

Abstract

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.