The decisions we make are guided by reasoned consideration of our goals and how best to achieve them, and if asked, we can explain why we chose to do one thing rather than another.  Not! These propositions are naive "folk psychology" and very far from the truth. We have little introspective access to the processes by which our "choices" are made, and the coherent explanations of our actions that we offer (and sometimes even believe ourselves) are often hogwash.  People, like other creatures, possess a grab bag of evolved decision processes of which we are dimly, if at all, aware, but which serve our ends very well.

Martin Daly is an evolutionary psychologist and professor at McMaster University, who studies determinants of the behavioural choices of people and other animals in real world settings.

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