Evolutionary Social cognition

It is nearly trite to note that the human social world is complex, dynamic, and rich in information. It is also a well-worn trope in psychology that the human mind lacks the capacity to process all this information, online or otherwise. So what’s a mind to do? The answer is that the mind attends to some bits of information while ignoring others, uses a variety of mental shortcuts to reduce processing load, and generally engages a wide range of simplifying processes to muddle through in the face of an otherwise daunting task. Such social cognition is often viewed as irrational and error prone, with ill consequences for both perceivers and perceived. The social mind is indeed a biased social information processor, but it is not arbitrarily biased. Rather, it is designed for a very specific purpose—a purpose that helps explain the ways in which, and why, social cognition is indeed focused and selective and biased. The mind is not designed to make perfectly correct decisions, and it is not designed to help people achieve happiness, a sense of control over their lives, or some greater meaning, although it may sometimes appear that way. Rather, the ultimate purpose of the mind is to enable people to manage the very real, very tangible opportunities and threats that humans have recurrently confronted across their evolutionary history in such a way as to enhance the individual’s reproductive fitness. The metatheory of evolutionary psychology assumes that the human brain, like all aspects of the human body, has been shaped by biological selection processes, with the general effect of increasing the success with which humans address recurring challenges to reproductive fitness (Buss, 1995; Ketelaar & Ellis, 2000; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). As with other metatheoretical approaches—for example, social psychology or cognitive science— evolutionary psychology is a set of assumptions that enable one to derive specific theories, models, and hypotheses that are themselves testable and subject to invalidation. Also, as with any metatheoretical approach, it can be evaluated against four important standards for scientific success: (a) its logical coherence; (b) its ability to enable the rigorous deduction of specific theories that explain the phenomena of psychology as we currently know them; (c) its ability to generate testable hypotheses that are interesting, novel, nuanced, and ultimately supported by data; and (d) its ability to connect phenomena at different levels of analysis and description. Judged against these criteria, the evolutionary approach to social psychology has proven to be quite successful (Neuberg, Kenrick, & Schaller, 2010). We focus here on evolutionary social cognition— how everyday cognition is tied to the fundamental, recurring adaptive challenges of social life. We begin by articulating the logical foundations of evolutionary social cognition. We then discuss the ways in which evolutionary social cognition is inherently motivated social cognition and subsequently review a rapidly growing body of research demonstrating the presence of adaptation-based, functional social-cognitive processes aimed at managing challenges of self-protection, disease avoidance, resource acquisition, social affiliation,