Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty, Paperback

Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adaptation to the real world of human behavior and interaction with the environment. Seen from this perspective, human behavior is more rational than it might otherwise appear. This work is extremely influential and has spawned an entire research program. This volume collects recent articles, looking at how people use "fast and frugal heuristics" to calculate probability and risk and make decisions. It includes the revised articles and newly written introduction that were first published in the hardcover edition. Its appeal is to a mixture of cognitive psychologists, philosophers, economists, and others who study decision making.

"Gerd Gigerenzer has created new, pathbreaking ways of thinking about human rationality. His ideas build on one another and are best seen as part of a coherent whole that is when the nature of his arguments emerges most clearly."-- Leda Cosmides, University of California Santa Barbara

Gerd Gigerenzer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. He has taught at the Universities of Munich, Constance, Salzburg, and Chicago. Recent books include Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart (1999, with Peter Todd et al.), Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (2000), Calculated Risks (2002), and Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (2007). He has been the recipient of many awards, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research.