On the Vicissitudes of Cultural and Evolutionary Aproaches to Social Cognition: The Case of Meta-cognitive Myopia

The basic tenet of the present article is that even though the scientific value of macro-biological (evolutionary or inter-cultural) approaches to social cognition may be questioned, evolutionary analyses may serve the creative function of a theory heuristic that can be used instrumentally to further theoretical explanations and to derive new testable implications. This point is illustrated with reference to meta-cognitive myopia, the challenging phenomenon that judgments and decisions are sensitive to the information given in a stimulus sample, but insensitive to the constraints and biases imposed on the genesis of that information. Both anecdotal and experimental evidence for meta-cognitive myopia points to serious shortcomings, but an evolutionary analysis nevertheless reveals that seemingly short-sighted reliance on the sample given may be quite an adaptive strategy. Indeed, some empirical evidence can be found to support some implications derived from the evolutionary interpretation of meta-cognitive myopia.