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The evolved architecture of hazard management: Risk detection reasoning and the motivational computation of threat magnitudes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2007

John Tooby*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Center for Evolutionary Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA93106-3210http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/
Leda Cosmides*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Center for Evolutionary Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA93106http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/

Abstract

The architecture of the hazard management system underlying precautionary behavior makes functional sense, given the adaptive computational problems it evolved to solve. Many seeming infelicities in its outputs, such as behavior with apparent lack of rational motivation or disproportionality, are susceptibilities that derive from the sheer computational difficulty posed by the problem of cost-effectively deploying countermeasures to rare, harmful threats.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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