Andreas Wilke

Biography

Over evolutionary time, humans had to solve difficult information-processing problems, such as finding food and finding a mate, in an uncertain world. My primary interest is in this human cognitive evolution, specifically, the evolution of human judgment and decision-making capacities. The central questions motivating my research are these: how has the evolutionary process shaped the cognitive mechanisms underlying human decision-making behavior under risk and uncertainty? How do these mechanisms operate in domains such as risk taking, mate choice, and foraging for food and information?

To answer these questions, I have adopted an interdisciplinary approach grounded firmly in the theory and methods of cognitive psychology but drawing on ideas from evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, and anthropology. Appropriately, my training has been interdisciplinary. After completing my diploma in cognitive psychology at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, I joined the International Max Planck Research School LIFE, which emphasizes the study of systematic changes in human behavior over evolutionary and ontogenetic time. LIFE takes an interdisciplinary approach by bringing together doctoral students from such diverse disciplines as biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and educational science and provides them with opportunities for collaborative research and supervision at cooperating institutions in the United States, Germany, and Switzerland. In the past, I have been a postdoctoral research fellow both at the Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture (BEC), UCLA Department of Anthropology as well as the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Altenberg, Austria.

Education Background

Psychology Ph.D. - 2006 Free University of Berlin
Psychology M.A. - 2002 Free University of Berlin

Experience

Professor Department of Psychology, Clarkson University, Current
Associate Professor Department of Psychology, Clarkson University, 2022
Assistant Professor Department of Psychology, Clarkson University, 2015
Research Scientist Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, 2009
Postdoctoral Researcher Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, 2010
Postdoctoral Researcher Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture (BEC), Department of Anthropology, University of California, 2008
Postdoctoral Researcher Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC), Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 2006

Courses Taught

• Introduction to Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Cognitive Evolution
• Learning and Memory
• Judgement and Decision Making
• Judgement and Decision Making for the Biomedical Sciences

Research Interests

To date, my research has investigated a variety of topics in human cognitive evolution. I have examined, for instance, the question of how risk taking differs across different domains of everyday life, how it should be defined and measured, and how an evolutionary perspective can help explain why young men in particular are very risk prone. My present research focuses on cognitive adaptations underlying decision making under uncertainty in foraging. I have investigated whether the same mechanisms animals use in foraging for patchy resources are also shared by humans and used in novel tasks such as searching for physical resources or information on the Internet. I am also currently investigating whether people bring to bear heuristics or assumptions about the patchiness of resources and whether these underlie certain well-known phenomena of human judgment, such as the “hot hand” fallacy. In this research, I have expanded my methods to include cross-cultural comparative experiments in a foraging society in Amazonian Ecuador. I am an active collaborator with researchers in adjacent disciplines and regularly interact with other fields of psychology by applying my findings, for example, to research in developmental and clinical psychology.

Grants

• 2021–2023 Research Grant, National Science Foundation (SES-2116145), The misperception of randomness: A developmental perspective (Principal Investigator)
• 2021 Faculty Undergraduate Research Program Award, Clarkson University, Statistical thinking and the understanding of chance in children (Principal Investigator)
• 2019 Inaugural Faculty Undergraduate Research Program Award, Clarkson University, The misperception of randomness: A virtual reality foraging study (Co-Principal Investigator)
• 2013 Research Grant, T. Urling and Mabel Walker Fellowship Program, Illusionary pattern detection in gamblers (Principal Investigator)
• 2012 Seed Grant, National Center for Responsible Gaming, Sequential decision-making and illusionary pattern detection in gamblers (Principal Investigator)
• 2005 Owen F. Aldis Scholarship Fund, International Society for Human Ethology, Human foraging behavior in patchy environments (Principal Investigator)

Publications

(last 5 years; students in boldface)

• Jarecki, J., & Wilke, A. (In press). Risk-taking behaviors. In T. K. Shackelford (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Sexual Psychology and Behavior (2ndEdition). Springer Nature.
• Wilke, A. (2021). Spatial dependency in local resource distributions informs misperception of randomness research. Human Ethology, 36 (Suppl.), HES45.
• Wilke, A. The adaptive problem of exploiting resources: Human foraging behavior in patchy environments. (2020). In L. Workman, W. Reader & J. H. Barkow (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior (pp. 241-249). Cambridge University Press.
• Jarecki, J. & Wilke, A. (2020). The relevance of subjective benefits in risky choice across ten domains of life. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Preprint: https://psyarxiv.com/x2n6f.
• Wilke, A. Risky behavior. (2020). In T. K. Shackelford & V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer Nature.
• Wilke, A. & Todd, P. M. (2018). Studying the evolution of cognition: Towards more methodological diversity in evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 12, 133–134.
• von Helversen, B., Mata, R., Samanez-Larkin, G. R., & Wilke, A. (2018). Foraging, exploration, or search? On the (lack) of convergent validity between three behavioral paradigms. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 12, 152–162.
• Wilke, A., Bedell, V., Lydick, J., Treat, J., Dawley, T., Pedersen, S., & Langen, T. (2018). Spatial dependency in local resource distributions. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 12, 163–172.
• Jarecki, J. & Wilke, A. (2018). Into the black box: Tracing information about risks related to ten evolutionary domains. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 12, 230–244.