Homo heuristicus: Why biased minds make better inferences

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Professor Gerd Gigerenzer, Director, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
• Monday 01 June 2009, 17:30-19:00
• Babbage Lecture Theatre - New Museums Site.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Arciris Garay Arevalo.

Free Public Lecture

Heuristics are efficient cognitive processes that ignore information. In contrast to the widely held view that less processing reduces accuracy, the study of heuristics shows that less information, computation, and time can in fact improve accuracy. We review the major progress made so far: (a) the discovery of less-is-more effects; (b) the study of the ecological rationality of heuristics, which examines in which environments a given strategy succeeds or fails, and why; (c) an advancement from vague labels to computational models of heuristics; (d) the development of a systematic theory of heuristics that identifies their building blocks and the evolved capacities they exploit, and views the cognitive system as relying on an ’’adaptive toolbox;’’ and (e) the development of an empirical methodology that accounts for individual differences, conducts competitive tests, and has provided evidence for people’s adaptive use of heuristics. Homo heuristicus has a biased mind and ignores part of the available information, yet a biased mind can handle uncertainty more efficiently and robustly than an unbiased mind relying on more resource-intensive and general-purpose processing strategies.

This talk is part of the Public Understanding of Risk series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All CMS events
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Babbage Lecture Theatre - New Museums Site
• Biology
• Biology
• CMS Events
• Cambridge Neuroscience Seminars
• Cambridge talks
• Chris Davis' list
• DPMMS Lists
• DPMMS info aggregator
• DPMMS lists
• Department of Psychiatry talks stream
• Featured lists
• Guy Emerson's list
• Hanchen DaDaDash
• Interested Talks
• Life Science
• Life Sciences
• Life Sciences
• ME Seminar
• Neuroscience
• Neuroscience Seminars
• Neuroscience Seminars
• Psychology talks and events
• Public Understanding of Risk
• School of Physical Sciences
• Social Psychology Seminar Series (SPSS)
• Statistical Laboratory info aggregator
• Statistics Group
• Stem Cells & Regenerative Medicine
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• Well-being Institute Seminars
• Yishu's list
• bld31
• dh539
• kt532's list
• my_list
• other talks

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.