Natural selection for the selection task: limits to social exchange theory

Reasoning about Conditional Promises and Warnings: Darwinian Algorithms, Mental Models, Relevance Judgements or Pragmatic Schemas?

It is proposed that reasoning about social contracts, such as conditional promises and warnings, is under the control of a compound schema made of two pragmatic schemas (Cheng & Holyoak, 1985), expressing an obligation and a permission. Two experiments were run using thematic versions of the Wason selection task in which the rule and the core of the scenario were kept constant and the point of view of the actor (e.g. promisor or promisee) was varied. The results supported the predictions (including the occurrence of a correct pattern of response that consists of all four cards) and falsified predictions derived from Cosmides' (1989) theory of social exchange. The mental models theory and Evans' two-stage theory of reasoning are also discussed in the light of the present results.

On the Verifiability of Evolutionary Psychological Theories: An Analysis of the Psychology of Scientific Persuasion

Evolutionary psychological theories have engendered much skepticism in the modern scientific climate. Why? We argue that, although sometimes couched in the language of unfalsifiability, the skepticism results primarily from the perception that evolutionary theories are less verifiable than traditional psychological theories. It is more difficult to be convinced of the veracity of an evolutionary psychological theory because an additional layer of inference must be logically traversed: One not only has to be persuaded that a particular model of contemporary psychological processes uniquely predicts observed phenomena, one must also be persuaded that a model of deeply historical processes uniquely predicts the model of psychological processes. This analysis of the psychology of scientific persuasion yields a number of specific suggestions for the development, testing, and discussion of evolutionary psychological theories.

No interpretation without representation: the role of domain-specific representations and inferences in the Wason selection task

The Wason selection task is a tool used to study reasoning about conditional rules. Performance on this task changes systematically when one varies its content, and these content effects have been used to argue that the human cognitive architecture contains a number of domain-specific representation and inference systems, such as social contract algorithms and hazard management systems. Recently, however, Sperber, Cara & Girotto (Sperber, D., Cara, F., & Girotto, V. (1995). Relevance theory explains the selection task. Cognition, 57, 31-95) have proposed that relevance theory can explain performance on the selection task - including all content effects - without invoking inference systems that are content-specialized. Herein, we show that relevance theory alone cannot explain a variety of content effects - effects that were predicted in advance and are parsimoniously explained by theories that invoke domain-specific algorithms for representing and making inferences about (i) social contracts and (ii) reducing risk in hazardous situations. Moreover, although Sperber et al. (1995) were able to use relevance theory to produce some new content effects in other domains, they conducted no experiments involving social exchanges or precautions, and so were unable to determine which - content-specialized algorithms or relevance effects - dominate reasoning when the two conflict. When experiments, reported herein, are constructed so that the different theories predict divergent outcomes, the results support the predictions of social contract theory and hazard management theory, indicating that these inference systems override content-general relevance factors. The fact that social contract and hazard management algorithms provide better explanations for performance in their respective domains does not mean that the content-general logical procedures posited by relevance theory do not exist, or that relevance effects never occur. It does mean, however, that one needs a principled way of explaining which effects will dominate when a set of inputs activate more than one reasoning system. We propose the principle of pre-emptive specificity - that the human cognitive architecture should be designed so that more specialized inference systems pre-empt more general ones whenever the stimuli centrally fit the input conditions of the more specialized system. This principle follows from evolutionary and computational considerations that are common to both relevance theory and the ecological rationality approach.

DEDUCTIVE REASONING

This chapter describes the main accounts of deductive competence, which explain what is computed in carrying out deductions. It argues that people have a modicum of competence, which is useful in daily life and a prerequisite for acquiring logical expertise. It outlines the three main sorts of theory of deductive performance, which explain how people make deductions: They rely on factual knowledge, formal rules, or mental models. It reviews recent experimental studies of deductive reasoning in order to help readers to assess these theories of performance.

Darwinian algorithms and the Wason selection task: a factorial analysis of social contract selection task problems

In four experiments with 760 subjects, the present study examined Cosmides' Darwinian algorithm theory of reasoning: specifically, its explanation of facilitation on the Wason selection task. The first experiment replicated Cosmides' finding of facilitation for social contract versions of the selection task, using both her multiple-problem format and a single-problem format. Experiment 2 examined performance on Cosmides' three main social contract problems while manipulating the perspective of the subject and the presence and absence of cost-benefit information. The presence of cost-benefit information improved performance in two of the three problems while the perspective manipulation had no effect. In Experiment 3, the cost-benefit effect was replicated; and performance on one of the three problems was enhanced by the presence of explicit negatives on the NOT-P and NOT-Q cards. Experiment 4 examined the role of the deontic term "must" in the facilitation observed for two of the social contract problems. The presence of "must" led to a significant improvement in performance. The results of these experiments are strongly supportive of social contract theory in that cost-benefit information is necessary for substantial facilitation to be observed in Cosmides' problems. These findings also suggest the presence of other cues that can help guide subjects to a deontic social contract interpretation when the social contract nature of the problem is not clear.

Domain-specific reasoning: social contracts, cheating, and perspective change

What counts as human rationality: reasoning processes that embody content-independent formal theories, such as propositional logic, or reasoning processes that are well designed for solving important adaptive problems? Most theories of human reasoning have been based on content-independent formal rationality, whereas adaptive reasoning, ecological or evolutionary, has been little explored. We elaborate and test an evolutionary approach. Cosmides' (1989) social contract theory, using the Wason selection task. In the first part, we disentangle the theoretical concept of a "social contract" from that of a "cheater-detection algorithm". We demonstrate that the fact that a rule is perceived as a social contract--or a conditional permission or obligation, as Cheng and Holyoak (1985) proposed--is not sufficient to elicit Cosmides' striking results, which we replicated. The crucial issue is not semantic (the meaning of the rule), but pragmatic: whether a person is cued into the perspective of a party who can be cheated. In the second part, we distinguish between social contracts with bilateral and unilateral cheating options. Perspective change in contracts with bilateral cheating options turns P & not-Q responses into not-P & Q responses. The results strongly support social contract theory, contradict availability theory, and cannot be accounted for by pragmatic reasoning schema theory, which lacks the pragmatic concepts of perspectives and cheating detection.