gerd gigerenzer (born september 3, 1947, wallersdorf, germany) is a german psychologist who has studied the use of bounded rationality and heuristics in decision making. gigerenzer is currently director of the center for adaptive behavior and cognition (abc) at the max planck institute for human developmentgerd gigerenzer | max planck institute for human development and director of the harding center for risk literacy,http://www.harding-center.com/index.php/en/team harding center for risk literacy (team) both in berlin, germany. how do humans make inferences about their world with limited time and knowledge? gigerenzerâs answer is that in an uncertain world, probability theory is not sufficient; people also use smart heuristics, that is, rules of thumb. he conceptualizes rational decisions in terms of the âadaptive toolboxâ (the repertoire of heuristics an individual or institution has) and the ability to choose a good heuristics for the task at hand. a heuristic is called âecologically rationalâ to the degree that it is adapted to the structure of an environment. gigerenzer argues that heuristics are not irrational or always second-best to optimization, as the accuracy-effort trade-off view assumes, in which heuristics are seen as short-cuts that trade less effort for less accuracy. in contrast, his and associated researchers' studies have identified situations in which "less is more", that is, where heuristics make more accurate decisions with less effort. this contradicts the traditional view that more information is always better or at least can never hurt if it is free. less-is-more effects have been shown experimentally, analytically, and by computer simulations. ==biography== ===academic career=== gigerenzer is former professor of psychology at the university of chicago and john m. olin distinguished visiting professor, school of law at the university of virginia. he is also batten fellow at the darden business school, university of virginia, and fellow of the berlin-brandenburg academy of sciences and the german academy of sciences leopoldina. ===heuristics=== with daniel goldstein he first theorized the recognition heuristic and the take-the-best heuristic. they proved analytically conditions under which semi-ignorance (lack of recognition) can lead to better inferences than with more knowledge. these results were experimentally confirmed in many experiments, e.g., by showing that semi-ignorant people who rely on recognition are as good as or better than the atp rankings and experts at predicting the outcomes of the wimbledon tennis tournaments. similarly, decisions by experienced experts(e.g., police, professional burglars, airport security) were found to follow the take-the-best heuristic rather than weight and add all information, whil
1947_births German_psychologists Living_people