Irrationality and automaticity in human behavior from an evolutionary perspective

• Main Author: Detlef Fetchenhauer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Expert Projects 2004-10-01
• Series: Sociologie Românească
• Online Access: https://arsociologie.ro/revistasociologieromaneasca/sr/article/view/939

The rational choice theorists argue that human decision making can be regarded as rational and conscious. On the other hand researchers studying heuristics, biases and automatic processes emphasize human irrationality. The aim of this paper is to show how this argument may be solved by another meta-theoretical paradigm that has emerged mainly within the last decade and that was labeled evolutionary psychology (for introductions see Buss, 1995, 1999; Gaulin & McBurney, 2001; Crawford & Krebs, 1998). This approach argues that human cognition and behavior is the result of an ongoing adaptation of humans to their natural and social environment. While cognitive (social) psychologists during the last decades spent much time demonstrating the error proneness of human cognition and decision making, evolutionary psychology rather emphasizes the efficiency with which the human mind uses its specific cognitive capacities to behave in an adaptive way (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999; Pinker, 1997). In this paper the main elements of evolutionary thinking are described and it will be discussed how evolutionary theory may help to solve the puzzle of automaticity and irrationality in human cognition and behavior.