Co-Evolution of Consciousness and Biases That Make Humans Behave Against Their Own Interest

Abstract

Humans are subject to a number of biases, such as hedonic adaptation, lack of self-control, and conspicuous consumption. A theoretical literature that analyzed the evolutionary origins of these biases has found that they generate behaviors that are adaptive but detrimental for the individual, what generates a gene-individual conflict. I propose the Biased Consciousness (BC) theory, that posits that biases and consciousness co-evolved, in such a way that adaptive behaviors that are detrimental for the individual operate outside of conscious awareness. The BC theory proposes a unified explanation for the origin of biases (independent of evolutionary mismatch and ecological rationality), that can shed light on issues on mental health and on the mechanisms for overcoming those biases, what has consequences for public policy. Moreover, the BC theory has implications for the study of consciousness, in particular about the “engineering of consciousness” in Artificial Intelligence: it might be optimal to endow a conscious agent with biases insulated from its conscious awareness, what raises pragmatic and ethical considerations.

Keywords: cognitive biases, consciousness, human evolution, neuroeconomics