Funded Grants

To err is human?: Exploring the evolutionary origins of cognitive biases

The question of what makes the human mind unique is one that has puzzled scientists and scholars for decades. Typically, when researchers pose this question, they tend to focus on aspects of the human mind that are computationally impressive--our capacity to learn language, use complex tools, represent causal relations, and so on. To date, scholars have gained considerable insight into the extent to which these so-called "smart" capacities are shared with other animals. Unfortunately, less work to date has examined the evolutionary origins of human capacities that make our species less proud. Humans are impressive in their capacity to speak and use mathematics, but we are also just as impressive in our biases and errors. Indeed, recent work in social psychology and behavioral economics has shown that human decision-making is plagued by a number of systematic errors, irrational strategies that persist in the face of time and experience. Unfortunately, little is known about the evolutionary origins of these biases. Are the systematic errors that plague human decision-making unique to our own species, the result of human-specific training and experience? Or are these errors the result of evolutionarily older processes, ones that might be shared with non-human species? The answers to these questions are critical, as understanding the origins of our human errors may provide us with helpful windows for determining ways to manage and eliminate such biases. Over the past few years, my students and I have begun a systematic study of evolution of human bias by examining the presence of similar biases in non-human primates. Recently, my students and I have developed methods that allow us to study the extent to which primates share human-like decision-making errors. Using such methods, we have learned that some non-human primate species share humanlike economic errors. Similarly, we have learned that non-human primates share the human tendency to "rationalize" their choices, switching their preferences to fit with their decisions. Our future work is aimed at examining the mechanisms underlying these phenomena, investigating the extent to which similar cognitive processes mediate these biases in both human and nonhuman primates. In addition, we have begun examining the evolutionary origins of other important human biases, such as our bias to favor the ingroup, stereotype others, and respond to unconscious contextual primes. As part of this future work, we hope to determine the extent to which some classic humans biases result from a long phylogenetic history, while others may be the result of human-specific cultural experiences. In doing so, we also hope to also gain insight into the best ways to allow our species to overcome their systematic biases.