Cecilia Heyes

In 2019, a precis of Cognitive Gadgets will be reviewed by 20–30 cognitive scientists, neuroscientists and philosophers in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

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

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

In 2017 Heyes gave the Chandaria Lectures at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London, and in 2020 she is scheduled to give the Rudolf Carnap Lectures at the Institute of Philosophy, Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

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 – 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, and may develop and change much more quickly and flexibly than cognitive instincts.

In common with evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, Heyes works within the computational view of the mind, and assumes that genetic evolution has played a major role in shaping the minds and behavior of all animals. In contrast with other evolutionary psychologists, she argues that cultural evolution has been the principal architect of the human mind. Distinctively human cognitive mechanisms – such as language, imitation, theory of mind, episodic memory, causal understanding, morality, and explicit metacognition – are constructed in childhood through social interaction. These "cognitive gadgets" are built from and by "old parts" – genetically inherited attentional, motivational, and learning processes that are present in a wide range of animals.

Heyes's "cultural evolutionary psychology" implies that the human mind is more fragile and more agile than previously assumed; more vulnerable to catastrophe, and better able to adapt to new technologies and ways of life. "In a skeletal, traumatized population, children would be unlikely to develop the Big Special cognitive mechanisms, such as causal understanding, episodic memory, imitation and mindreading. The capacity for cultural evolution, as well as the products of cultural evolution, would be lost." However "cultural evolutionary psychology ... suggests that distinctively human cognitive mechanisms are light on their feet, constantly changing to meet the demands of new social and physical environments. ... On the cognitive gadgets view, rather than taxing an outdated mind, new technologies – social media, robotics, virtual reality – merely provide the stimulus for further cultural evolution of the human mind."

Diane Coyle, an economist and former advisor to the UK Treasury, described Cognitive Gadgets as a new and "persuasive approach to thinking about decision-making – not for example as a matter of setting up choices in ways that nudge flawed humans to do the right thing".

Heyes chose the word 'gadgets' for culturally evolved cognitive mechanisms, in part, because she likes the sound of the word – almost as much as the word 'rapture'.

In 2008, Heyes gave up her lab and moved to All Souls College, University of Oxford, where she is a Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Sciences. She is also a full professor affiliated with the Department of Experimental Psychology.

She was awarded the British Psychological Society's Cognitive Section Prize in 2004, Fellowship of the British Academy in 2010, and Fellowship of the Cognitive Science Society in 2018. Heyes was President of the Experimental Psychology Society from 2018 to 2019.

Heyes has collaborated with economists as a Fellow of the ESRC Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution (1995–2010), founded by Ken Binmore, and since 2010 as a member of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Advanced Study in Toulouse, directed by Paul Seabright.

In 1988, Heyes started a 20-year period back at UCL, first as a lecturer in psychology, and later as a Senior Lecturer (1993), Reader (1996), and Professor (2000). Throughout the period she headed a laboratory studying social cognition – social learning, imitation, mirror neurons, and self-recognition. This experimental work, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, BBSRC, EPSRC, and ESRC, initially focused on nonhuman animals – rodents and birds – and later used behavioural and neurophysiological methods to examine cognitive processes in adult humans.

Returning to the UK and to experimental psychology, from 1986–1989 Heyes was a Research Fellow of Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge. During this period she studied animal learning and cognition in the laboratory of Nicholas Mackintosh and Anthony R. Dickinson.

In her first postdoctoral research position (1984–1986), Heyes studied evolutionary epistemology, a blend of philosophy, evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Funded by a two-year Harkness Fellowship, she worked with Donald T. Campbell at Lehigh University, with William Wimsatt at the University of Chicago, and with Daniel Dennett at Tufts University.

After passing the eleven-plus exam, Heyes studied at Highworth Grammar School for Girls and then obtained a Bachelor of Science (1981) and PhD (1984) in psychology at University College London (UCL). In 2016 she was awarded a Doctor of Science, a higher doctorate, by the University of Oxford.

Cecilia was the youngest of four children born to Helen Heyes (née Henneker) and James Heyes, who died in 1965. She credits her brother, Vincent Heyes, with having "taught his little sister how to argue, and how to enjoy doing it – in the right company – above nearly all things". She was the first member of her family to go to university.

Cecilia Heyes FBA (born 6 March 1960) is a British psychologist who studies the evolution of the human mind. 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), and President of the Experimental Psychology Society.