Evolution and the Social Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and Social Cognition

by Forgas; Joseph P.

• ISBN13: 9781841694580
• ISBN10: 1841694584
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-03-15
• Publisher: Psychology Pres

Summary

This book seeks to combine the study of human social cognition - the way we think, decide, plan and analyze social situations - with an evolutionary framework that considers these activities in light of evolutionary adaptations for solving problems of survival faced by our ancestors over thousands of generations. The chapters report recent research and theories illustrating how evolutionary principles can shed new light on the subtle and often subconscious ways that cognitive mechanisms guide peoples " thoughts, memories, judgments, attitudes and behaviors in social life. The contributors to this volume, who are leading researchers in their fields, seek answers to such intriguing questions as: how can evolutionary principles help to explain human beliefs, attitudes, judgments, prejudice, and group preferences? Are there benefits to behaving unpredictably? Why are prototypical faces more attractive than atypical ones? How do men and women think about, and select potential mates? What are the adaptive functions of negative affect? What are the evolutionary influences on the way people think about and respond to social exclusion and ostracism? Evolution and the Social Mind offers a highly integrated and representative coverage of this emerging field, and is suitable as a textbook in advanced courses dealing with social cognition and evolutionary psychology.

Table of Contents

About the Editors	p. xiii
Contributors	p. xv
Preface	p. xvii
Evolutionary Psychology and Social Thinking: History, Issues, and Prospects	p. 1
Evolutionary Psychology and Social Cognition	p. 2
A Natural Affinity	p. 3
Different "Why" Questions	p. 5
Content-Specificity and Adaptive Design	p. 6
Refining the Metaphor for Social Cognition	p. 7
Interface with Modern Evolutionary Biology	p. 8
What can Social Cognition Bring to the Table?	p. 9
Overview of the Book	p. 14
Foundations
The Social Brain Hypothesis and its Relevance to Social Psychology	p. 21
The Social Brain Hypothesis	p. 25
The Structure of Human Social Networks	p. 26
Two Specializations of Social Cognition	p. 28
The Evolution of Social Inference Processes: The Importance of Signaling Theory	p. 33
Signaling Systems	p. 34
Processing Incidental Effects	p. 41
Deception	p. 43
Conclusion	p. 45
How the Mind Warps: A Social Evolutionary Perspective on Cognitive Processing Disjunctions	p. 49
Our Basic Model of How Fundamental Motives Influence Cognitive Processes	p. 51
An Unexpected Disjunction between Visual Attention, Frequency Estimation, and Memory	p. 51
An Opposite Disjunction for Outgroup Males	p. 57
Suppression and Amplification	p. 58
Disjunctions' Functions	p. 60
A General Model of the Biases Underlying Disjunctions	p. 62
Some Empirical Implications of Considering Disjunctions in Evolutionary Ecological Terms	p. 63
Conclusion	p. 66
The Evolutionary Psychology of Affect and Cognition
Appraisals, Emotions, and Adaptation	p. 71
Theories of Emotion	p. 73
Implications of Appraisal Theories	p. 81
Ambiguous Situations and Incomplete Emotions	p. 83
How Different are Modular and Appraisal Theories, Really?	p. 85
The Evolutionary Bases of Social and Moral Emotions: Dominance, Submission, and True Love	p. 89
Motivation, Emotion, and Communication: The Developmental-Interactionist View	p. 89
Altruism	p. 95
Attachment and Higher-Level Social and Moral Emotions	p. 99
Conclusions	p. 102
The Strange Cognitive Benefits of Mild Dysphoria: On the Evolutionary Advantages of Not Being Too Happy	p. 107
Introduction	p. 107
The Evolutionary Functions of Affect	p. 108
Contemporary Cognitive Approaches	p. 110
The Empirical Evidence	p. 111
The Interpersonal Benefits of Negative Affect	p. 118
Conclusions	p. 121
Evolution, Social Cognition, and Depressed Mood: Exploring the Relationship Between Depression and Social Risk Taking	p. 125
Introduction	p. 125
Darwinian Models of Depressed Mood	p. 126
Theories of Resource Energy Conservation	p. 126
Social Theories of the Evolution of Depression	p. 127
The Social Risk Hypothesis: An Integrative View	p. 130
Depression and Cognition About Social Risk	p. 133
Depression and Reduced Social Risk Taking	p. 133
Recent Studies on Depression and Risk Propensity	p. 134
Discussion and Conclusions	p. 137
The Evolutionary Psychology of Mate Selection
Coevolved Cognitive Mechanisms in Mate Search: Making Decisions in a Decision-shaped World	p. 145
Searching for a Space	p. 145
The Big Picture: Ecological Rationality	p. 146
Sequential Decision Making in Mate Choice	p. 148
Strategies for Mutual Mate Search	p. 152
Summary and Connections	p. 156
An Evolutionary Account of Strategic Pluralism in Human Mating: Changes in Mate Preferences Across the Ovulatory Cycle	p. 161
Strategic Pluralism and Human Mating: Patterned Changes in Women's Mate Preferences Across the Ovulatory Cycle	p. 161
Basic Evolutionary Concepts	p. 162
Mating Strategies in Humans	p. 164
	p. 166
	p. 169
Broader Theoretical Considerations	p. 173
Aligning Evolutionary Psychology and Social Cognition: Inbreeding Avoidance as an Example of Investigations into Categorization, Decision Rules, and Emotions	p. 179
Introduction	p. 179
What is a Computational Theory of Mind and "Why Should Social-Cognitive Scientists Care?	p. 181
Selection Pressures Guiding the Evolution of Inbreeding Avoidance Mechanisms	p. 182
An Information-Processing View of Inbreeding Avoidance: What Would a Well-Engineered System for Inbreeding Avoidance Look Like?	p. 184
Empirical Investigation of Systems for Inbreeding Avoidance	p. 190
Conclusion	p. 191
The Self in Intimate Relationships: A Social Evolutionary Account	p. 195
A Conceptual and Methodological Backdrop	p. 196
The Role of the Self in Mate Selection	p. 197
The Self Never Sleeps	p. 205
Conclusions	p. 207
The Evolutionary Psychology of Interpersonal Processes
A Social Cognitive Evolutionary Approach to Jealousy: The Automatic Evaluation of One's Romantic Rivals	p. 213
The Importance of Jealousy	p. 213
Inventory of Relevant Rival Characteristics	p. 214
Experimentally Manipulating Rival Characteristics	p. 216
Body Build	p. 219
Sexual Versus Emotional Infidelity	p. 222
Conclusion	p. 225
Cognitive and Social Adaptations for Leadership and Followership: Evolutionary Game Theory and Group Dynamics	p. 229
Leadership and Followership in an Evolutionary Framework	p. 230
An Evolutionary Game Analysis of Leadership	p. 231
Non-human Evidence for Leadership	p. 235
Leadership in Humans	p. 236
Discussion	p. 238
Proximate and Ultimate Origins of a Bias for Prototypical Faces: An Evolutionary Social Cognitive Account	p. 245
The Prototypicality Bias as an Adaptation	p. 247
Domain Specificity of the Prototypicality Bias	p. 248
The Prototypicality Bias as a Side-Effect	p. 250
Conclusion	p. 258
The Social Prediction Dynamic: A Legacy of Cognition and Mixed Motives	p. 263
Social Pressures on Cognitive Evolution	p. 264
On Social Scientists Trying to Predict People	p. 265
The Averseness of Being the Target of Prediction	p. 268
The Social Prediction Dynamic: Delineating the Theoretical Framework	p. 270
Situational Factors Moderate the Need to be Unpredictable	p. 272
Conclusion	p. 275
The Evolution of an Ostracism Detection System	p. 279
Introduction	p. 279
The Evolutionary Importance of Inclusion in Groups	p. 280
Model of Ostracism Detection	p. 281
Experimental Tests of the Ostracism Detection System	p. 283
The Indiscriminate Ostracism Detection System	p. 286
Implications and Conclusions	p. 288
The Behavioral Immune System: Its Evolution and Social Psychological Implications	p. 293
The Past	p. 295
The Present	p. 299
The Future	p. 305
Author Index	p. 308
Subject Index	p. 320
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