Human Nature and Institutional Analysis

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Abstract
Introduction The human mind was mainly designed in a competitive process of natural genetic selection, which is characterized by random genetic mutation – producing new traits, and cumulative selection of those traits that allow individuals who carry them to survive and reproduce more. Natural selection thus acts as a chief design engineer even if other forces, such as sexual selection, path dependency, and simple noise, are also present. We see well now only because a long series of mutations triggered redesigns which permitted our ancestors' sight to improve. The same happens with our mental processes, even those considered more rational, involved in making decisions and interacting socially. Modern cognition sciences perform a sort of “reverse engineering” of these mental processes. Their findings may trigger a scientific revolution of Copernican proportions in the social sciences and, in any case, require a full reconsideration of standard assumptions about human behavior, related to both rationality and cooperation. This chapter reviews some of these findings and examines some of their consequences for the analysis of institutions and organizations. We start by exploring the consequences of our specialization in producing knowledge, which are twofold: it has ensured our success in dominating the environment but has also changed the environment very fast and radically. This change occurred so fast that it did not allow time for natural selection to adapt our biology, causing us to be maladapted in important dimensions. To adapt we therefore need the artifacts we call institutions.

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