A central focus in the study of cultural evolution is the relative importanc 5935 e of individual and social information in driving the diffusion of behavioral and symbolic variants. In observational social learning research, however, empirical tests of quantitative models are limited by a dearth of long-term, individual-level data. Here we present an archive of longitudinal records from the game of Chess, which will allow researchers to study the yearby-year evolution of opening strategies among a large multi-national population of players. These records will allow for analyses of within-individual skill development, diffusion models of strategies over time, network-structured time-series modeling of social learning, and measurement of effects motivated by other theoretical models of social learning including payoff- and frequency-dependent heuristics. These records provide a unique window into a long-term record of human behavior, often in high stakes competitions.
library(devtools)
install_github("ctross/chessbase")
library(chessbase)
head(chessdata)