Adaptive rationality: An evolutionary perspective on cognitive bias

A casual look at the literature in social cognition reveals a vast collection of biases, errors, violations of rational choice, and failures to maximize utility. One is tempted to draw the conclusion that the human mind is woefully muddled. We present a three-category evolutionary taxonomy of evidence of biases: biases are (a) heuristics, (b) error management effects, or (c) experimental artifacts. We conclude that much of the research on cognitive biases can be profitably reframed and understood in evolutionary terms. An adaptationist perspective suggests that the mind is remarkably well designed for important problems of survival and reproduction, and not fundamentally irrational. Our analysis is not an apologia intended to place the rational mind on a pedestal for admiration. rather, it promises practical outcomes including a clearer view of the architecture of systems for judgment and decision making, and exposure of clashes between adaptations designed for the ancestral past and the demands of the present. By casually browsing journals in the social sciences one can discover a collection of human biases, errors, violations of rational choice, and failures to maximize utility. Papers published in Social Cognition are illustrative. In just 2007, the journal published a special issue dedicated to the hindsight bias, which is the tendency to believe that events that have occurred are more probable when assessing them after the fact than when estimating them prospectively (Blank, Musch, & Pohl, 2007). Other examples include misapprehensions of probability like the hot hand fallacy that leads people to erroneously believe that basketball players who have shot several successful baskets are more likely to succeed on the next try (Gilovich, Vallone, & Tversky, 1985). There are also many effects of emotion purported to cloud good judgment (e.g., Leith & Baumeister, 1996), overuses of stereotypes (Ross & Nisbett, 1991), misapprehensions of the motives of members of the opposite sex (Abbey, 1982), common violations of monetary utility in behavioral eco

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