Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World

by Gerd Gigerenzer

Overview

Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive thinking: to understand how minds cope with their environments, both ecological and social. Gerd Gigerenzer proposes and illustrates a bold new research program that investigates the psychology of rationality, introducing the concepts of ecological, bounded, and social rationality. His path-breaking collection takes research on thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decision-making out of an ethereal world where the laws of logic and probability reign, and places it into our real world of human behavior and interaction. Adaptive Thinking is accessibly written for general readers with an interest in psychology, cognitive science, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also teaches a practical audience, such as physicians, AIDS counselors, and experts in criminal law, how to understand and communicate uncertainties and risks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198031178
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/07/2002
Series:	Evolution and Cognition
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Gerd Gigerenzer is Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and was previously a professor of psychology at The University of Chicago and other institutions. His books include the recent Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart (Oxford, 1999).

Table of Contents

I Where Do New Ideas Come From?		1	(57)
From tools to theories: A heuristic of discovery		3	(23)
Mind as computer: The social origin of a metaphor		26	(18)
Ideas in exile: The struggles of an upright man		44	(13)
II Ecological Rationality		57	(68)
Ecological intelligence		59	(18)
AIDS counseling for low-risk clients		77	(15)
How to improve Bayesian reasoning without instruction		92	(33)
III Bounded Rationality		125	(74)
Probabilistic mental models		129	(37)
Reasoning the fast and frugal way		166	(33)
IV Social Rationality		199	(38)
Rationality: Why social context matters		201	(10)
Domain-specific reasoning: Social contract and cheating detection		211	(15)
The modularity of social intelligence		226	(11)
V Cognitive Illusions and Statistical Rituals		237	(60)
How to make cognitive illusions disappear		241	(26)
The Superego, the Ego, and the Id in statistical reasoning		267	(22)
Surrogates for theories		289	(8)
References		297	(32)
Name Index		329	(8)
Subject Index		337

Editorial Reviews

"The entire book skillfully conveys a number of messages at different levels. It would be impossible to identify one message that takes precedence over the others, although part V of the book clearly stands in its own right. Gigerenzer draws together the different programmes of work and successfully achieves his objective of presenting a different story about reasoning, a story that is stimulating and inspiring."—Applied Cognitive Psychology

From the Publisher