Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart

by Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd, ABC Research Group

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart invites readers to embark on a new journey into a land of rationality that differs from the familiar territory of cognitive science and economics. Traditional views of rationality tend to see decision makers as possessing superhuman powers of reason, limitless knowledge, and all of eternity in which to ponder choices. To understand decisions in the real world, we need a different, more psychologically plausible notion of rationality, and this book provides it. It is about fast and frugal heuristics--simple rules for making decisions when time is pressing and deep thought an unaffordable luxury. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices, classifications, and predictions by employing bounded rationality.
But when and how can such fast and frugal heuristics work? Can judgments based simply on one good reason be as accurate as those based on many reasons? Could less knowledge even lead to systematically better predictions than more knowledge? Simple Heuristics explores these questions, developing computational models of heuristics and testing them through experiments and analyses. It shows how fast and frugal heuristics can produce adaptive decisions in situations as varied as choosing a mate, dividing resources among offspring, predicting high school drop out rates, and playing the stock market.
As an interdisciplinary work that is both useful and engaging, this book will appeal to a wide audience. It is ideal for researchers in cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science, as well as in economics and artificial intelligence. It will also inspire anyone interested in simply making good decisions.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Business, Economics, Science, Philosophy, Academic

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Gerd Gigerenzer is a German psychologist who has studied the use of bounded rationality and heuristics in decision making, especially in medicine. A critic of the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, he argues that heuristics should not lead us to conceive of human thinking as riddled with irrational cognitive biases, but rather to conceive rationality as an adaptive tool that is not identical to the rules of formal logic or the probability calculus.

Gerd Gigerenzer ist ein deutscher Psychologe und seit 1997 Direktor der Abteilung „Adaptives Verhalten und Kognition“ und seit 2009 Direktor des Harding-Zentrum für Risikokompetenz, beide am Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung in Berlin. Er ist mit Lorraine Daston verheiratet.

Gigerenzer arbeitet über begrenzte Rationalität, Heuristiken und einfache Entscheidungsbäume, das heißt über die Frage, wie man rationale Entscheidungen treffen kann, wenn Zeit und Information begrenzt und die Zukunft ungewiss ist (siehe auch Entscheidung unter Ungewissheit). Der breiten Öffentlichkeit ist er mit seinem Buch Bauchentscheidungen, bekannt geworden; dieses Buch wurde in 17 Sprachen übersetzt und veröffentlicht.

[English bio taken from English Wikipedia article]

[Deutsche Autorenbeschreibung aus dem deutschen Wikipedia-Artikel übernommen]

Reviews

[Doc Opp · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book lays out the foundations of the fast and frugal program of research in judgment and decision making. However, it is fairly disingenuous at times; most of the arguments it attributes to competing theories are straw men, or horribly corrupted versions of the actual arguments. Results are cherry picked to support the argument; even though much of the theory has a lot of counter-evidence you'd never know it from this book, which is very one sided. If you don't know the literature in judgment very well, reading this will give you a very skewed impression of the field. I'd recommend starting with Plous's The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work highlights findings from the work of a group of scholars on "decision making shortcuts" (or heuristics). Gigerenzer has become well know in circles focvusing on decision making, evolution, and heuristics. In short, simple decision making techniques, according to research as presented here, can be pretty effective--even when compared with more complex methods.

[Fabian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lacks the depth and real world usefulness of Kahnemans work in the field.

[Jaszmina · Rating 1 out of 5]

"As a measure of the success of a heuristic, we compare its performance with the actual requirements of its environment, which can include making accurate decisions, in a minimal amount of time, and using a minimal amount of information." - for this to be true we only need to define 'accurate decision' as the one arrived at this way.

"We use the term "ecological rationality" to bring environmental structure back into bounded rationality." - as opposed to Simon who neglects environment???????

These kinds of inconsistencies make me to doubt what they are saying...

It is almost amazing how they pick-and-choose major conceptions as well as (often misinterpreted) random thoughts from the sideline and arrange these to support they argument.

Evidently they spent a huge amount of money, what a waste... they ended up with an over-mystification of simple rules-of-thumb.

[Gerhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heuristische Verfahren waren immer schon mein Thema, immerhin haben wir in einem Forschungsprojekt an der TU Wien eine Heuristik für die menschengerechte Gestaltung von Arbeitssystemen erarbeitet. Mit diesem Buch bringe ich mich auf den aktuellen Stand der Forschung, vieles vertraut, vieles wirklich neu.
Ob das Buch mich selbst "schlau" macht, wie der Titel verspricht, werden wir ja sehen, das müssen andere beurteilen ;-)

[Ludmirska]

great must read, will read again)

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a dry read. Not very exciting. It took a while to get through it because I became bored. Interesting topic, not so interesting book.

[Vinh Khang Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Try to make your decision not the best but the most satisfying one.

[42 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kahneman's fanboys are obviously pissing their red-panties when asked about this book.

[Pradyumn Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sequel to Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. You don't need complex solutions to complex problems; there's always a simpler solution that does the job. imo quite intriguing.

[Awab Al-Rawe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really struggled to get through this book. Not many interesting pieces beside countless studies and stats that are irrelevant to improving one's thinking patterns.

[Lille · Rating 5 out of 5]

The usefulness of this book depends on how well-trained an individual’s intuition is, and how poorly-performed an individual’s complex decision-making process is. This book helps me make decisions on things with my intuition, which I have trained it by exposing myself to good source of information. Truly life-changing when you trust your guts.