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Psicothema was founded in Asturias (northern Spain) in 1989, and is published jointly by the Psychology Faculty of the University of Oviedo and the Psychological Association of the Principality of Asturias (Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos del Principado de Asturias).
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Psicothema, 2010. Vol. Vol. 22 (nº 1). 4-8




Past and present environments: The evolution of decision making

Andreas Wilke and Peter M. Todd*

Clarkson University and * Indiana University

The human mind is filled with evolved decision mechanisms designed to meet adaptively important goals. In this article we lay out a framework for studying those mechanisms from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, emphasizing the importance of multiple influences of the environment on shaping the decision strategies and their operation. These strategies often take the form of simple heuristics constructed from building blocks that draw on evolved capacities, all of which fit to particular information structures in the environment. We illustrate these ideas with two examples of heuristics used in important adaptive domains: deciding when to leave a resource patch, and predicting when a sequence of events will stop or continue.

Ambientes pasados y presentes: la evolución de la toma de decisiones. La mente humana está repleta de mecanismos evolutivos de toma de decisiones diseñados para alcanzar importantes metas adaptativas. En este artículo se traza un marco para el estudio de dichos mecanismos desde la perspectiva de la psicología evolucionista, haciendo énfasis en la importancia de las numerosas influencias que el ambiente tiene en la formación y funcionamiento de las estrategias de decisión. Estas estrategias adoptan a menudo la forma de heurísticos sencillos construidos a partir de componentes que, a su vez, emanan de capacidades que han evolucionado, encajando con determinadas estructuras de información del entorno. Aquí se ilustran estas ideas con dos ejemplos de heurísticos empleados en dominios adaptativos importantes: decidir cuándo abandonar un área con recursos y predecir cuándo una secuencia de eventos se detendrá o continuará.

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