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 | | Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer ISBN-10: 9780143113768 ISBN-10: 0-14-311376-3 ISBN-13: 9780143113768 ISBN-13: 978-0-14-311376-8 Paperback 2008-06-24 Penguin (Non-Classics) Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description Why is split second decision-making superior to deliberation? Gut Feelings delivers the science behind Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink Reflection and reason are overrated, according to renowned psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer. Much better qualified to help us make decisions is the cognitive, emotional, and social repertoire we call intuition—a suite of gut feelings that have evolved over the millennia specifically for making decisions. “Gladwell drew heavily on Gigerenzer’s research. But Gigerenzer goes a step further by explaining just why our gut instincts are so often right. Intuition, it seems, is not some sort of mystical chemical reaction but a neurologically based behavior that evolved to ensure that we humans respond quickly when faced with a dilemma” (BusinessWeek). | ||
Reviews | ||
Simplify your decision-making Fascinating discussion of how the mind works in decision making, and an easy read. Recommend. | ||
thought provoking Very informative book provides an analysis from a different perspective stressing the role of intuition. Reasoning's role of Unconscious mind is convincing. | ||
Annotated study on the value of instinctive responses over rational ones According to Freud and other intellectuals and philosophers, intuition is unsound and has no merit. Freud warns not to put any value on gut feelings. Instead, people should trust logic and reasoning. German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer begs to differ. He claims that intuition often works far better than reason to solve problems and make decisions. Gigerenzer details numerous studies that repeatedly demonstrate intuition's ability to trump logic. He illustrates how people with less information often make better decisions than experts. getAbstract recommends Gigerenzer's book to people who want to understand and improve the way they make decisions. As Alexander Pope said, "Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise." Gigerenzer might agree. What do you think? More to the point, what do you feel in your gut? | ||
A Plain English Defense of Bounded Rationality One of the major unexplained gaps in the science of economics is the assumption that consumers are rational. Based on the assumption of rationality economics papers are littered with differential equations and other forbidding mathematics which describe how consumers make choices. But in the real world consumers don't solve differential equations in order to decide whether or not to buy a cup of coffee. This is a sticky problem. The standard rebuttal is to point out that the flight of a baseball can also be described with all sorts of forbidding differential equations. The fact that baseball players don't solve the differential equations which describe the flight of the ball doesn't mean that they can't catch! Baseball players must subconsciously approximate this mathematical process. Gigerenzer points out that the standard rebuttal is wrong. A baseball player couldn't hope to gather and process all the information about the flight of a ball in real time, even approximately. Instead they use what he calls the gaze heuristic: 'fix your eyes on the ball and adjust your running speed so that your angle of vision to the ball remains constant.' The interesting thing about the gaze heuristic is that it ignores virtually all of the information about the ball's flight and focuses on just one piece of information: your angle of vision relative to the ball. But that single piece of information is enough to reliably let people catch a ball. That in a nutshell is the concept of bounded rationality. Once you factor in the cost of gathering and processing information it becomes extremely irrational to make decisions by solving differential equations. Heuristics (AKA rules of thumb) are the way to go. They give you a lot more bang for your information-processing buck. Here is the truly radical part of Gigerenzer's book. If you were to simply claim that heuristics allow people to make decisions that are almost as good on vastly less information then I doubt many modern social scientists would disagree. But in fact Gigerenzer shows that heuristics can outperform the information-greedy favorites of the social sciences like multiple regression analysis and neural networks with back propagation. Another really nice thing about this book is that Gigerenzer is a very good writer with a very light touch. You will not find the heavy and ponderous writing that you normally expect from scholars. This book is an easy and fast read that belongs on the shelf of everyone interested in politics and the social sciences. You may also want to consider The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences (you can easily and profitably skip over the math). | ||
Explains why trusting your instincts can be a very good choice I am an engineer and IT projects manager. As such, I am frequently faced with having to make high-impact decisions about complex topics under time pressure. Gerd Gigerenzer's book (subtitled "Short cuts to better decision making" in the Penguin Australia edition) does an excellent job of explaining why gut feelings are more often right than wrong. His research-based examples also provide valuable insight into what to do when you don't have all the facts (too much knowledge can actually be bad) and how to set up processes to facilitate better decision-making. I seriously hope that if I'm ever delivered into a hospital emergency department as a patient the doctors are using Gigerenzer's "Fast and Frugal decision trees". Not only is the science fascinating and the list of references extensive but Gigerenzer has also written an eminently readable book, with more than a few laugh-out-loud sections and many more "aha!" moments. An excellent book to read if you want to understand yourself and the people around you better. | ||