Why are we good at detecting cheaters? A reply to Fodor

It is argued that the recent criticism by Fodor (Cognition 75 (2000) 29) of “cheater detection” in the Wason selection task is based upon a false presumption about what the task entails. Fodor compares two different ways of presenting the task, rather than two different task domains (social and non-social). Consequently, the conclusion that the selection task can tell us nothing about either the architecture or the history of cognition is invalid. Fodorʹs explanation of the Wason selection task is examined experimentally and compared to predictions derived from social contract theory (Cognition 31 (1989) 187). It is concluded that, although Fodorʹs variant of the Wason selection task improves performance, this improvement is independent of the task domain and is insufficient to account for the “cheater detection” effect.