Evolutionary changes – The daily blog of behavioral and cognitive economics

Fear Change

Evolution in animals selects not only for static features, like claws, but also for behaviors that change with context. Like a habit of using claws to cut into prey. Thus long term evolution selects for short term change. But at a higher level of abstraction, one can think of such behaviors of change as a static habits that don’t change. And for most of human history, our behavior was mostly static in this sense. We evolved large libraries of behavioral habits and rules, and rules for deciding which ones win when they conflict, but mostly just executed those rules, instead of changing them. ….[READ]