Evolutionary Psychology and Information Systems Research (Paperback)

Evolutionary Psychology (EP) attributes much human behavior to evolved psychological traits - psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments. Traits like the mental capacity for acquiring language, or the ability to infer emotion by looking at a human face, or the ability to cooperate, or even the universal fear of snakes and spiders, are viewed by EP practitioners as the basis for how humans behave. That behavior is in turn affected by environmental factors: what language will be learned? What emotions are displayed most often? Cooperate in what activity, and to what end? SNAKE

The point of Information System (IS) EP research then is that these evolved psychological traits very likely influence our behavior toward modern technologies, and a deeper understanding of how technology affects behavior might be achieved by applying concepts and theories from EP. Springer author Ned Kock (Information Systems Action Research: An Applied View of Emerging Concepts and Methods) is probably the leading scholar in IS-EP research, and he is proposing an AoIS volume to gather together for the first time invited papers on EP concepts and theories that can be used as a basis for future research; examples of ongoing IS-EP research; and a look at the current debate on IS-EP research. Kock will invite leading scholars in IS and IS-EP research as well as the leading scholars in pure EP (see attached proposal for all names) to contribute papers. Topics to be covered include basic human behavior toward technology; interface design; online dating and consumer behavior; information search and use behavior; and autopoiesis and self-organizing information systems.

This ground-breaking new volume will immediately appeal to all researchers in IS and to many in pure EP research. Additionally, there should be some keen interest in fields like software engineering, computer science, organization and systems research, and industrial engineering. Advanced graduate and post-doctorate students in these areas will also find much of interest.