Free University of Berlin
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.
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.
(last 5 years; students in boldface)
Wilke, A. Risky behavior. (in press). 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.
Wilke, A., & Mata, R. (2017). Cognitive bias. Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology (pp. 1–6). Elsevier.
Sherman, A. K., Minich, S. H., Langen, T. A., Skufca, J. D., & Wilke, A. (2016). Are college students’ assessments of threat shaped by the dangers of their childhood environment? Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 31, 2006–2025.
Gaissmaier, W., Wilke, A., Scheibehenne, B., McCanney, P., & Barrett, H. C. (2016). Betting on illusionary patterns: Probability matching in habitual gamblers. Journal of Gambling Studies, 32, 143–156
Wilke, A., Minich, S., Panis, M., Langen, T. A., Skufca, J., & Todd, P. M. (2015). A game of hide and seek: Expectations of clumpy resources influence hiding and searching patterns. PLoS ONE, 10, e0130976.
Wilke, A., Sherman, A. K., Curdt, B., Mondal, S., Fitzgerald, C., & Kruger, D. J. (2014). An evolutionary domain-specific risk-taking scale. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 8, 123–141.
Blanchard, T. C., Wilke, A., & Hayden, B. Y. (2014). Hot hand bias in monkeys. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 40, 280–286.
Wilke, A., Scheibehenne, B., Gaissmaier, W., McCanney, P., & Barrett, H. C. (2014). Illusionary pattern detection in habitual gamblers. Evolution and Human Behavior, 35, 291–297.
Conference Presentations
(last 5 years; students in boldface)
Wilke, A., Dawley, T., Pedersen, S., & Langen, T. A. (July, 2018). Spatial dependency in local resource distributions. Paper presented at the 30th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Wilke, A. (July, 2018). The misperception of randomness. Paper presented at the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer School on Animal Minds and Animal Ethics, Potsdam, USA.
Hall, B., Dawley, T., & Wilke, A. (July, 2018). Spatial adaptations for cognitive search: A literature study. Poster presented at the 30th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Chicoine, N., & Wilke, A. (July, 2018). Exploring humans’ perception of randomness with two spatial distribution statistics. Poster presented at the 30th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Wilke, A., Dawley, T., & Lydick, J. (September, 2017). Spatial dependency in local resource distributions. Paper presented at the 20th annual meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP), Potsdam, Germany.
Bedell, V., Lydick, J., Treat, J., Dawley, T., & Wilke, A. (November, 2016). Spatial dependency in local resource distributions. Poster presented at the 57th annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Boston, USA.
Wilke, A., Sherman, A., Curdt, B., Monday, S., Fitzgerald, C., & Kruger, D. J. (July, 2016). An evolutionary domain-specific risk scale. Paper presented at the 28th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), Vancouver, Canada.
Jarecki, J. B., & Wilke, A. (July, 2016). Non-compensatory integration of memory cues in evolutionary domains of risky choice. Paper presented at the 28th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), Vancouver, Canada.
Jarecki, J. B., & Wilke, A. (April, 2016). Evolutionary functions shape the construction of risk preferences. Paper presented at the Shaped/Constructed Preferences Workshop, Potsdam, Germany.
Jarecki, J. B., & Wilke, A. (August, 2015). Risk attitudes meet process-tracing: Informational cues relate to risk-attitudes in ten different domains. Poster presented at the 25th biannual meeting of Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference (SPUDM), Budapest, Hungary.
Jarecki, J. B., & Wilke, A. (May, 2015). Informational cues for risk differentiate between risk-attitudes in ten evolutionary domains. Paper presented at the 27th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), Columbia, USA.
Wilke, A., Blanchard, T. C. & Hayden, B. Y. (May, 2015). Hot hand bias in rhesus monkeys. Paper presented at the 27th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), Columbia, USA.
Welsch, J., Liss, J., Plaza, J., Sherman, A., & Wilke, A. (April, 2015). Construct validity and behavioral correlates of the evolutionary domain-specific risk scale. Paper presented at the 9th annual meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS), Boston, USA.
Wilke, A., Blanchard, T. C. & Hayden, B. Y. (April, 2015). Hot hand bias in rhesus monkeys. Paper presented at the 9th annual meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS), Boston, USA.
Robinson, D., Langen, T., Skufca, J., Todd, P. M. & Wilke, A. (April, 2015). A game of hide and seek: Expectations of clumpy resources influence hiding and searching patterns. Poster presented at the 9th annual meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS), Boston, USA.
Bedell, V., Scheibehenne, B., Gaissmaier, W., Barrett, H. C. & Wilke, A. (April, 2015). Illusionary pattern detection in habitual gamblers. Poster presented at the 9th annual meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS), Boston, USA.
Schlaeg, L., Sherman, A., Mondal, S., Fitzgerald, C., Kruger, D. J. & Wilke, A. (April, 2015). An evolutionary domain-specific risk-taking scale. Poster presented at the 9th annual meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS), Boston, USA.
Plaza, J., Liss, J., & Wilke, A. (April, 2015). A literature review on the hot hand phenomenon and the gambler’s fallacy. Poster presented at the 9th annual meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS), Boston, USA.
Jarecki, J. B., & Wilke, A. (March, 2015). Process tracing across evolutionary domains: A novel view on risky choice. Paper presented at the 10th annual meeting of European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association (EHBEA), Helsinki, Finland.
Welsch, J., Sherman, A., & Wilke, A. (April, 2014). Construct validity of the evolutionary domain-specific risk scale. Poster presented at the 8th annual meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS), New Paltz, USA.
Liss, J., Plaza, J., & Wilke, A. (April, 2014). Behavioral correlates of the evolutionary domain-specific risk scale. Poster presented at the 8th annual meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS), New Paltz, USA.