Error management theory: A new perspective on biases in cross-sex mind reading.

Abstract

A new theory of cognitive biases, called error management theory (EMT), proposes that psychological mechanisms are designed to be predictably biased when the costs of false-positive and false-negative errors were asymmetrical over evolutionary history. This theory explains known phenomena such as men's overperception of women's sexual intent, and it predicts new biases in social inference such as women's underestimation of men's commitment. In Study 1 (N = 217), the authors documented the commitment underperception effect predicted by EMT. In Study 2 (N = 289), the authors replicated the commitment bias and documented a condition in which men's sexual overperception bias is corrected. Discussion contrasts EMT with the heuristics and biases approach and suggests additional testable hypotheses based on EMT.

Error management theory and the adaptive significance of transgenerational maternal‐stress effects on offspring phenotype

“…Error management theory, an evolutionary perspective based on signal detection theory (Box 1), provides a formal theoretical framework for evaluating how organisms (including humans) should make decisions amidst uncertainty (Haselton & Buss, 2000; Johnson, Blumstein, Fowler, & Haselton, 2013; Swets, 1992). EMT has been successfully used to examine many biological phenomena, such as plant defense mechanisms against herbivores (Orrock et al., 2015), mate‐selection behavior (Haselton & Buss, 2000), deception in animal communication (Wiley, 1994), optimal antipredator behavior (Bouskila & Blumstein, 1992), and defense mechanisms in human health and disease (Nesse, 2005).…”

Conscious thought is for facilitating social and cultural interactions: How mental simulations serve the animal–culture interface.

“…Indeed, the tendency to exaggerate future displeasure may be not a miscalculation but rather a helpful and adaptive response (e.g., Haselton & Buss, 2000). The capacity for conscious simulations to influence behavior may be bolstered by exaggerations of the severity of future feelings (Ainslie, 2007).…”

From Evolved Motives to Everyday Mentation: Evolution, Goals, and Cognition

“…For instance, individuals concerned for their safety should not only be particularly attuned to potential physical threats in their environment, but their threshold for perceiving individuals and events as threatening should be relatively low: Indeed, because the costs of failing to identify an authentic threat are high (Kurzban & Leary, 2001), such individuals may initially perceive threats where they objectively do not exist. Similarly, individuals interested in sex and romance may have a relatively low threshold for perceiving mating opportunities, and thus may "see" mating opportunities that objectively do not exist (Haselton & Buss, 2000).…”

“…Indeed, people selectively attend preconsciously to angry faces (Öhman & Mineka, 2001) and are able to detect them quickly (Hansen & Hansen, 1988;Öhman et al, 2001;Van Honk, Tuiten, de Haan, van den Hout, & Stam, 2001). And because failing to identify a physical threat is generally a more costly error than is perceiving a threat where one does not exist (Haselton & Buss, 2000), individuals concerned with physical safety should be biased toward seeing anger, at least initially, in even neutrally expressive faces.…”