Gerd Gigerenzer
Encyclopedia
Gerd Gigerenzer is a German
psychologist
who has studied the use of bounded rationality
and heuristic
s 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 bias
es, but rather to conceive rationality as an adaptive tool that is not identical to the rules of formal logic
or the probability calculus.
With Daniel Goldstein
he first theorized the recognition heuristic
.
He has written several books on the subject of heuristics and decision making, including Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart (1999), and Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox (2001) with Reinhard Selten
. His two books for a lay audience, Reckoning with Risk: Learning to Live with Uncertainty (2002, published in the U.S. as Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You), and Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (2007), have been translated into 18 languages. "Rationality for Mortals", his most recent book, investigates decisions under limited time and information. He has trained U.S. Federal Judges, German physicians, and top managers in decision making and understanding risks and uncertainties.
Gigerenzer is currently director at Max Planck Institute for Human Development
and former Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago
and John M. Olin Distinguished Visiting Professor, School of Law at the University of Virginia
. He is also the director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy, Berlin, Batten Fellow at the Darden Business School, University of Virginia, and Fellow of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is married to Lorraine Daston
, director at Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
and has one daughter, Thalia Gigerenzer.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
who has studied the use of bounded rationality
Bounded rationality
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision...
and heuristic
Heuristic
Heuristic refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution, where an exhaustive search is impractical...
s in decision making
Decision making
Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...
, especially in medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
. A critic of the work of Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel laureate. He is notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology....
and Amos Tversky
Amos Tversky
Amos Nathan Tversky, was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a pioneer of cognitive science, a longtime collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement...
, he argues that heuristics should not lead us to conceive of human thinking as riddled with irrational cognitive bias
Cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations. Implicit in the concept of a "pattern of deviation" is a standard of comparison; this may be the judgment of people outside those particular situations, or may be a set of independently verifiable...
es, but rather to conceive rationality as an adaptive tool that is not identical to the rules of formal logic
Formal logic
Classical or traditional system of determining the validity or invalidity of a conclusion deduced from two or more statements...
or the probability calculus.
With Daniel Goldstein
Daniel Goldstein
Daniel Goldstein is an Americanpsychologist known for the specification and testing ofheuristics and models of bounded rationality in the field ofjudgment and decision making.-Academic career:...
he first theorized the recognition heuristic
Recognition heuristic
The recognition heuristic has been used as a model in the psychology of judgment and decision making and as a heuristic in artificial intelligence. It states: :...
.
He has written several books on the subject of heuristics and decision making, including Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart (1999), and Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox (2001) with Reinhard Selten
Reinhard Selten
-Life and career:Selten was born in Breslau in Lower Silesia, now in Poland, to a Jewish father, Adolf Selten, and Protestant mother, Käthe Luther. For his work in game theory, Selten won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences...
. His two books for a lay audience, Reckoning with Risk: Learning to Live with Uncertainty (2002, published in the U.S. as Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You), and Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (2007), have been translated into 18 languages. "Rationality for Mortals", his most recent book, investigates decisions under limited time and information. He has trained U.S. Federal Judges, German physicians, and top managers in decision making and understanding risks and uncertainties.
Gigerenzer is currently director at Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Max Planck Institute for Human Development
The Max Planck Institute for Human Development is located in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1963 and is one of 80 institutes in the Max Planck Society ....
and former Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and John M. Olin Distinguished Visiting Professor, School of Law at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
. He is also the director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy, Berlin, Batten Fellow at the Darden Business School, University of Virginia, and Fellow of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is married to Lorraine Daston
Lorraine Daston
Lorraine Daston is an American historian of science, presently the executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin...
, director at Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin was established in March 1994. Its research is primarily devoted to a theoretically oriented history of science, principally of the natural sciences, but with methodological perspectives drawn from the cognitive sciences and from...
and has one daughter, Thalia Gigerenzer.