ABSTRACT
Evolutionary social cognition links the human information processing adaptations gleaned from eons of natural selection to social cognitive tendencies of the present day. The essential theme of Richard Dakin's profoundly influential work, The Selfish Gene, describes how every organism is comprised of multiple genes, each of which can be seen as using that organism as a survival machine. Genes equip the individual organism with minimal, basic motivations that aid survival and reproduction. The chapter includes mechanisms that produce discrete behavioural events as well as motivational effects extended over longer periods of time. The link between automatic evaluation and muscular readiness exploited in therapeutic techniques for the treatment of addictions was successful. Cognitive neuroscience studies of the brain regions involved in motivated behaviour support a model wherein the same underlying mechanisms govern both unconscious and conscious forms of goal pursuit. Traditional psychological approaches to human motivation have assumed an agented, conscious self at the helm, deliberately forming judgments and making decisions.
