Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences

Topics in Cognitive Science 1 (1):107-143 (2009)
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Abstract

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: the discovery of less-is-more effects; the study of the ecological rationality of heuristics, which examines in which environments a given strategy succeeds or fails, and why; an advancement from vague labels to computational models of heuristics; 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 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

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reprint Gigerenzer, Gerd; Brighton, Henry (2009) "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences". Cognitive Science ():

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References found in this work

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart.Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd & A. B. C. Research Group - 1999 - New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press USA. Edited by Peter M. Todd.
Features of similarity.Amos Tversky - 1977 - Psychological Review 84 (4):327-352.
Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic & Amos Tversky - 1985 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36 (3):331-340.

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