Using Evolutionary Computation as Models/Tools for Human Decision Making and Creativity Research

This paper presents a review of our recently completed interdisciplinary research project "Evolutionary Perspective on Collective Decision Making" that was conducted through close collaboration between computational, organizational and social scientists at Binghamton University. In this project, we utilized Evolutionary Computation in several non-traditional ways-(1) as a theoretical framework for reinterpreting the dynamics of collective human decision making processes, (2) as a computational simulation model of idea generation and selection, and (3) as a research tool for collecting high-resolution experimental data of actual collaborative design and decision making from human subjects.