Cecilia Heyes

Cecilia Heyes
Born (1960-03-06) 6 March 1960 (age 64)
Ashford, UK
Alma materUniversity College London (BSc 1981, PhD 1984)
Scientific career
FieldsPsychology
InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford

Cecilia Heyes FBA (born 6 March 1960) is a British psychologist who studies the evolution of the human mind.[1] She is a Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Sciences at All Souls College, and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy (psychology and philosophy sections),[2] and President of the Experimental Psychology Society.

Heyes is the author of Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking (2018),[3][4][5] described by Tyler Cowen as "an important book and likely the most thoughtful of the year in the social sciences".[6]

Heyes has argued that the picture presented by some evolutionary psychology of the human mind as a collection of cognitive instincts – organs of thought shaped by genetic evolution over very long time periods[7][8] – does not fit research results. She posits instead that humans have cognitive gadgets – "special-purpose organs of thought" built in the course of development through social interaction. These are products of cultural rather than genetic evolution,[9] and may develop and change much more quickly and flexibly than cognitive instincts.

In 2017, Heyes gave the Chandaria Lectures at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London.[9] She has written for the Times Literary Supplement[10] and given a number of radio and television interviews.[11]

  1. ^ "Cecilia M Heyes". users.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  2. ^ "Professor Cecilia Heyes". The British Academy. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  3. ^ "Cognitive Gadgets – Cecilia Heyes | Harvard University Press". www.hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  4. ^ "Celia Heyes on Cognitive Gadgets". www.socialsciencespace.com. June 2018. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  5. ^ "New thoughts on thinking | The Psychologist". thepsychologist.bps.org.uk. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  6. ^ Cowen, Tyler (2018-03-30). "Cognitive Gadgets". Marginal Revolution. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  7. ^ Cosmides, Leda; Tooby, John (1997-01-13). "Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer". cep.ucsb.edu. Archived from the original on 2020-06-24. Retrieved 2017-12-30.
  8. ^ "I can't believe it's evolutionary psychology!". 2016-03-07.
  9. ^ a b "The Chandaria Lecture Series". Institute of Philosophy. 2017-09-22. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  10. ^ Heyes, Cecilia (2017-07-26). "How to make sense of human irrationality". TheTLS. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  11. ^ "'All in the Mind', BBC Radio 4, broadcast on 16 December, 2014". users.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-04-02.