The indirect evolutionary approach: Bridging the gap between rationality and adaptation

Besides opportunistically rational choice, emotion and commitment to norms influence human choice behavior. Traditionally economists have opted for the rationality side while sociologists worked the other side of the street. By pursuing an indirect evolutionary approach one can integrate the two polar extremes to some extent in one model. To that end preferences on which rational choices depend are treated as endogenous to an evolutionary process. In this process, choices are not motivated by objective evolutionary success, yet objective evolutionary success depends on the choices made, which in turn depend on subjective preferences. Success feeds back on subjective preferences, and so on. How this argument may be pushed to the point where rationality itself is treated as adaptive is illustrated in an indirect evolutionary treatment of preference formation in a very elementary yet fundamental game of trust.