Do we expect natural selection to produce rational behaviour?

Houston, Alasdair I.; McNamara, John M.; Steer, Mark D.

Abstract

We expect that natural selection should result in behavioural rules which perform well; however, animals (including humans) sometimes make bad decisions. Researchers account for these with a variety of explanations; we concentrate on two of them. One explanation is that the outcome is a side effect; what matters is how a rule performs (in terms of reproductive success). Several rules may perform well in the environment in which they have evolved, but their performance may differ in a 'new' environment (e.g. the laboratory). Some rules may perform very badly in this environment. We use the debate about whether animals follow the matching law rather than maximizing their gains as an illustration. Another possibility is that we were wrong about what is optimal. Here, the general idea is that the setting in which optimal decisions are investigated is too simple and may not include elements that add extra degrees of freedom to the situation. © 2007 The Royal Society.

Citation

Houston, A. I., McNamara, J. M., & Steer, M. D. (2007). Do we expect natural selection to produce rational behaviour?. Philosophical Transactions B: Biological Sciences, 362(1485), 1531-1543. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2051

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Sep 29, 2007
• Journal: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
• Print ISSN: 1471-2970
• Publisher: Royal Society, The
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 362
• Issue: 1485
• Pages: 1531-1543
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2051
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1024877
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2051