Social Cognitive Development from an Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract

Game theory provides a useful framework for conceptualizing social decisions in which one person's behavior affects outcomes that matter to other individuals. Game theory can also help us understand the computational problems inherent in social decision making. To explain human adaptive success, culture plays an important role. Models from population biology are used to explain (a) culture as a dynamic process, (b) the role of psychological mechanisms in enabling cumulative cultural evolution, and (c) teaching as an evolved phenomenon. How game theoretic approaches can be integrated with algorithmic-level processes remains, however, to be resolved. Difficulties lie in how cognitive and social psychologists approach the study of cognition as well as in how existing data are used to interpret human (and nonhuman) decision making.