Hidden Bibliographic Details
| Other authors / contributors: | Hammerstein, Peter, 1949-
Stevens, Jeffrey R., 1974-
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| ISBN: | 0262306026
9780262306027
9780262306942
0262306948
9780262018081
026201808X
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| Digital file characteristics: | text file
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| Notes: | "Eleventh Ernst Strüngmann Forum held June 19-24, 2011, Frankfurt am Main."
Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-426) and index.
Print version record.
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| Summary: | 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.
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| Other form: | Print version: Ernst Strüngmann Forum (11th : 2011 : Frankfurt am Main, Germany). Evolution and the mechanisms of decision making. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, ©2012 9780262018081
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