Why heuristics work

ABSTRACT—The adaptive toolbox is a Darwinian-inspired theory that conceives of the mind as a modular system that is composed of heuristics, their building blocks, and evolved capacities. The study of the adaptive toolbox is descriptive and analyzes the selection and structure of heuristics in social and physical environments. The study of ecological rationality is prescriptive and identifies the structure of environments in which specific heuristics either succeed or fail. Results have been used for designing heuristics and environments to improve professional decision making in the real world. Logic, probability, and heuristics are three central ideas in the intellectual history of the mind. For Aristotle, logic was a theory of ideal human reasoning and inference. Probability theory emerged only late in the mid-17th century, replacing logica

Embodied heuristics

Intelligence evolved to cope with situations of uncertainty generated by nature, predators, and the behavior of conspecifics. To this end, humans and other animals acquired special abilities, including heuristics that allow for swift action in face of scarce information. In this article, I introduce the concept of embodied heuristics, that is, innate or learned rules of thumb that exploit evolved sensory and motor abilities in order to facilitate superior decisions. I provide a case study of the gaze heuristic, which solves coordination problems from intercepting prey to catching a fly ball. Various species have adapted this heuristic to their specific sensorimotor abilities, such as vision, echolocation, running, and flying. Humans have enlisted it for solving tasks beyond its original purpose, a process akin to exaptation. The gaze heuristic also made its way into rocket technology. I propose a systematic study of embodied heuristics as a research framework for situated cognition and embodied bounded rationality