Gut Feelings, Gerd Gigerenzer
Gut Feelings, Gerd Gigerenzer
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Gut Feelings
The Intelligence of the Unconscious

Author: Gerd Gigerenzer

Narrator: Dick Hill

Unabridged: 7 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/10/2007


Synopsis

Gerd Gigerenzer is one of the researchers of behavioral intuition responsible for the science behind Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller Blink. Gladwell showed us how snap decisions often yield better results than careful analysis. Now, Gigerenzer explains why our intuition is such a powerful decision-making tool.

Drawing on a decade of research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Gigerenzer demonstrates that our gut feelings are actually the result of unconscious mental processes—processes that apply rules of thumb that we've derived from our environment and prior experiences. The value of these unconscious rules lies precisely in their difference from rational analysis—they take into account only the most useful bits of information rather than attempting to evaluate all possible factors. By examining various decisions we make—how we choose a spouse, a stock, a medical procedure, or the answer to a million-dollar game show question—Gigerenzer shows how gut feelings not only lead to good practical decisions but also underlie the moral choices that make our society function.

In the tradition of Blink and Freakonomics, Gut Feelings is an exploration of the myriad influences and factors (nature and nurture) that affect how the mind works, grounded in cutting-edge research and conveyed through compelling real-life examples.

About Gerd Gigerenzer

Gerd Gigerenzer is Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the author of Calculated Risks, Gut Feelings, and Risk Savvy and the coeditor of Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions, and Classification in the Wild. He has trained judges, physicians, and managers in decision making and understanding risks and uncertainties.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Alaeddin on September 12, 2010

It was great in the first few chapters. I learned some very interesting ideas (which I will summarize at the end of this review), but then it got too scientific and philosophical and I totally lost interest and goodwill once the author started attributing everything to so-called "evolution" and even......more

Goodreads review by Martha on December 22, 2015

GUT FEELINGS: THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. I just enjoyed re-reading Gerd Gigerenzer's book "Gut Feelings". The reason I wanted to re-read it is to compare what Gigerenzer says about social instincts to what Matthew Lieberman has explored and written about in his recently published book "Soc......more

Goodreads review by Ninakix on January 01, 2014

I just didn't find myself very compelled by this book. Unfortunately, the material covered in this book is covered by a lot of books these days, and the way this book does so is not very compelling. The writing itself was bland, and the book didn't necessarily delve into these things in a way that m......more

Goodreads review by Andrea on August 19, 2007

After hearing this book described as the "science behind Malcolm Gladwell's Blink," I thought that it might be inaccessible and filled with jargon. Instead, I found that Gigerenzer directs his entertaining and controversial book to the average reader. His scientific study of intuition in decision-ma......more

Goodreads review by Bob on January 18, 2009

Basically, the theme of the book is that thinking in patterns of relations in domains of partial knowledge can be more effective than thinking sequentially through logical associations of all that is known. Toward the end of the book this message started feeling repetitive, so I felt that I was lear......more