Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real WorldWhere 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. |
Contents
WHERE DO NEW IDEAS COME FROM? | 1 |
From Tools to Theories A Heuristic of Discovery | 3 |
Mind as Computer The Social Origin of a Metaphor | 26 |
Ideas in Exile The Struggles of an Upright Man | 44 |
ECOLOGICAL RATIONALITY | 57 |
Ecological Intelligence | 59 |
AIDS Counseling for LowRisk Clients | 77 |
How to Improve Bayesian Reasoning without Instruction | 92 |
Rationality Why Social Context Matters | 199 |
DomainSpecific Reasoning Social Contracts and Cheating Detection | 209 |
The Modularity of Social Intelligence | 224 |
COGNITIVE ILLUSIONS AND STATISTICAL RITUALS | 235 |
How to Make Cognitive Illusions Disappear | 239 |
The Superego the Ego and the Id in Statistical Reasoning | 265 |
Surrogates for Theories | 287 |
REFERENCES | 295 |
BOUNDED RATIONALITY | 123 |
Prohahilistic Mental Models | 127 |
Reasoning the Fast and Frugal Way | 164 |
SOCIAL RATIONALITY | 197 |
NAME INDEX | 327 |
| 335 | |
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Common terms and phrases
adaptive algorithms base rates base-rate Bayes's rule Bayesian inference behavior bounded rationality breast cancer Brunswik calculation Cambridge Chapter cities client cognitive illusions cognitive psychology concepts confidence judgments conjunction fallacy correct answers counselors cue validities cue values decision discovery domain ecological validities environment error estimate experiment experimental fallacy false positives fast and frugal Fisher Fisherian frequency format frequency judgments frequency of correct frequentist German Gigerenzer Hoffrage human hybrid logic instance Journal Kahneman knowledge level of significance mathematical mental models mind modules natural frequencies natural sampling Neyman normative null hypothesis objects overconfidence participants percentage correct perceptual person PMM theory prediction probabilistic probability theory problem propositional logic Psychological Review recognition heuristic reference class relative frequency representative result scientific selected short menu shortcut Simon social contract social intelligence specific structure Take The Best task test positive tion tools-to-theories heuristic Tversky University Press