Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, part II

Models of the various adaptive specializations that have evolved in the human psyche could become the building blocks of a scientific theory of culture. The first step in creating such models is the derivation of a so-called “computational theory” of the adaptive problem each psychological specialization has evolved to solve. In Part II, as a case study, a sketch of a computational theory of social exchange (cooperation for mutual benefit) is developed. The dynamics of natural selection in Pleistocene ecological conditions define adaptive information processing problems that humans must be able to solve in order to participate in social exchange: individual recognition, memory for one's history of interaction, value communication, value modeling, and a shared grammar of social contracts that specifies representational structure and inferential procedures. The nature of these adaptive information processing problems places constraints on the class of cognitive programs capable of solving them; this allows one to make empirical predictions about how the cognitive processes involved in attention, communication, memory, learning, and reasoning are mobilized in situations of social exchange. Once the cognitive programs specialized for regulating social exchange are mapped, the variation and invariances in social exchange within and between cultures can be meaningfully discussed.