Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty

by Gerd Gigerenzer

Overview

Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adaptation to the real world of human behavior and interaction with the environment. Seen from this perspective, human behavior is more rational than it might otherwise appear. This work is extremely influential and has spawned an entire research program. This volume collects recent articles, looking at how people use "fast and frugal heuristics" to calculate probability and risk and make decisions. It includes the revised articles and newly written introduction that were first published in the hardcover edition. Its appeal is to a mixture of cognitive psychologists, philosophers, economists, and others who study decision making.

"Gerd Gigerenzer has created new, pathbreaking ways of thinking about human rationality. His ideas build on one another and are best seen as part of a coherent whole that is when the nature of his arguments emerges most clearly."— Leda Cosmides, University of California Santa Barbara

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199747092
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/16/2010
Series:	Evolution and Cognition
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Gerd Gigerenzer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. He has taught at the Universities of Munich, Constance, Salzburg, and Chicago. Recent books include Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart (1999, with Peter Todd et al.), Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (2000), Calculated Risks (2002), and Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (2007). He has been the recipient of many awards, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Bounded and rational
2. Fast and frugal heuristics
3. Rules of thumb in animals and humans
4. I think, therefore I err
5. Striking a blow for sanity in theories of rationality
6. Out of the frying pan into the fire
7. What's in a sample? A manual for building cognitive theories
8. "A 30% chance of rain tomorrow"
9. Simple tools for understanding risks: From innumeracy to insight
10. The evolution of statistical thinking
11. Mindless statistics
12. Children can solve Bayesian problems
13. In the year 2054: Innumeracy defeated
References
Subject Index
Name Index

Editorial Reviews

"Gerd Gigerenzer has created new, pathbreaking ways of thinking about human rationality. His ideas build on one another and are best seen as part of a coherent whole that is when the nature of his arguments emerges most clearly."— Leda Cosmides, University of California Santa Barbara

From the Publisher