Adaptive Thinking - Rationality in the Real World

Author: (German) Gerd Gigerenzer
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: Where does new thinking come from? What is social intelligence? How does ignorance transform into insight? Why do social scientists blindly adopt mindless statistical rituals? This important work provides incisive answers to these questions. It rethinks rationality as adaptive thinking, which focuses on understanding how the mind adapts to its surroundings, including both natural and social environments. In summary, the essays collected in this book develop the idea that human thinking—ranging from scientific creativity to understanding what an HIV test result means—partially "happens" outside the mind. In this book, Professor Gigerenzer proposes and elaborates on a bold and novel research agenda for exploring psychological issues of rationality. Creative concepts such as ecological rationality, bounded rationality, and social rationality provide a fresh theoretical framework for studying human rationality. His unique insights and arguments bring research on human thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decision-making back from a world of ethereal fantasy—where logic and probability rules reign—to the real world where heuristics and social motivations play a role. Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World collects the author's most important papers on rationality, reasoning, and decision-making from the 1990s. It is suitable for a broad readership interested in fields such as psychology, cognitive science, statistics, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also provides practical solutions for practitioners such as doctors, HIV counselors, and criminal experts on how to understand and communicate uncertainty and risk information. Where does new thinking come from? What is social intelligence? How does ignorance transform into insight? Why do social scientists blindly adopt mindless statistical rituals? This important work provides incisive answers to these questions. It rethinks rationality as adaptive thinking, which focuses on understanding how the mind adapts to its surroundings, including both natural and social environments. In summary, the essays collected in this book develop the idea that human thinking—ranging from scientific creativity to understanding what an HIV test result means—partially "happens" outside the mind. In this book, Professor Gigerenzer proposes and elaborates on a bold and novel research agenda for exploring psychological issues of rationality. Creative concepts such as ecological rationality, bounded rationality, and social rationality provide a fresh theoretical framework for studying human rationality. His unique insights and arguments bring research on human thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decision-making back from a world of ethereal fantasy—where logic and probability rules reign—to the real world where heuristics and social motivations play a role. Adaptive Thinking is suitable for a broad readership interested in fields such as psychology, cognitive science, statistics, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also provides practical solutions for practitioners such as doctors, HIV counselors, and criminal experts on how to understand and communicate uncertainty and risk information.