<p>Either, depending on the bias.
For example, the Müller-Lyer illusion could well have some significant learned aspects (how much is debated). Categorical perception of phonemes is a kind of bias, I guess, that's definitely mostly learning. At the other end of the spectrum supposedly 'irrational' context effects in decision making have been observed in slime molds, those are probably universal (so they're probably also adaptive).</p>

<p>In general it's probably not very useful to split cognition into 'biases' and 'the rest'. Maybe think of cognition as a memory system (with some flaws and a salience-not-probability weighting scheme) a reasoning/decision system (with limited resources and high time pressures) a perceptual system (facing a fundamentally underspecified problem) etc etc... the 'biases' are not really distinct processes. From that framing the question is hard to answer. If you singled out a particular bias, probably someone here could tell an evo story about how it came to be though! Maybe even a plausible one.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-16T15:54:04.400Z
Related to your answer, I'd suggest learning about [heuristics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic) is important to understanding the adaptive nature of things we also think of as biases - this is the umbrella term for a lot of what your answer describes.
Bryan Krause
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-16T13:39:14.703Z
2018-08-16T13:39:14.703Z
steveLangsford
<p>Are cognitive biases "hardcoded" into our brain or learned?
And have they evolved over time e.g. more cognitive biases could emerge evolutionally?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-06-07T05:52:57.193Z
Possible duplicate of https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/8584/7001
Arnon Weinberg
<cognitive-neuroscience><bias>
Cognitive biases ontogenesis
J. Doe
# Cognitive biases ontogenesis

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-08-16)

Are cognitive biases "hardcoded" into our brain or learned?
And have they evolved over time e.g. more cognitive biases could emerge evolutionally?

**Tags:** cognitive-neuroscience, bias

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Possible duplicate of https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/8584/7001  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2018-08-16. Score: 1

Either, depending on the bias.
For example, the Müller-Lyer illusion could well have some significant learned aspects (how much is debated). Categorical perception of phonemes is a kind of bias, I guess, that's definitely mostly learning. At the other end of the spectrum supposedly 'irrational' context effects in decision making have been observed in slime molds, those are probably universal (so they're probably also adaptive).

In general it's probably not very useful to split cognition into 'biases' and 'the rest'. Maybe think of cognition as a memory system (with some flaws and a salience-not-probability weighting scheme) a reasoning/decision system (with limited resources and high time pressures) a perceptual system (facing a fundamentally underspecified problem) etc etc... the 'biases' are not really distinct processes. From that framing the question is hard to answer. If you singled out a particular bias, probably someone here could tell an evo story about how it came to be though! Maybe even a plausible one.

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: Related to your answer, I'd suggest learning about [heuristics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic) is important to understanding the adaptive nature of things we also think of as biases - this is the umbrella term for a lot of what your answer describes.  

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