Evolution and the Mechanisms of Decision Making bookcover

Evolution and the Mechanisms of Decision Making

4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world

Description

A multidisciplinary examination of cognitive mechanisms, shaped over evolutionary time through natural selection, that govern decision making.

How do we make decisions? Conventional decision theory tells us only which behavioral choices we ought to make if we follow certain axioms. In real life, however, our choices are governed by cognitive mechanisms shaped over evolutionary time through the process of natural selection. Evolution has created strong biases in how and when we process information, and it is these evolved cognitive building blocks—from signal detection and memory to individual and social learning—that provide the foundation for our choices. An evolutionary perspective thus sheds necessary light on the nature of how we and other animals make decisions.

This volume—with contributors from a broad range of disciplines, including evolutionary biology, psychology, economics, anthropology, neuroscience, and computer science—offers a multidisciplinary examination of what evolution can tell us about our and other animals' mechanisms of decision making. Human children, for example, differ from chimpanzees in their tendency to over-imitate others and copy obviously useless actions; this divergence from our primate relatives sets up imitation as one of the important mechanisms underlying human decision making. The volume also considers why and when decision mechanisms are robust, why they vary across individuals and situations, and how social life affects our decisions.

Product Details

PublisherThe MIT Press
Publish DateNovember 30, 2012
Pages448
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconHardback
EAN/UPC9780262018081
Dimensions9.3 X 6.4 X 1.1 inches | 2.1 pounds

Reviews

Hammerstein and Stevens's new collection of essays on the mechanisms underlying human and animal decision making and their evolution definitely makes for rewarding reading. Written by some of the most central researchers in the field, it presents recent and original work on the topic in a way that is engaging and accessible.—Acta Biotheoretica

Earn by promoting books

Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.sign up to affiliate program link
Become an affiliate