Review by Choice Review
Gigerenzer's portrayal of (and advice about) the unconscious mind is intriguing and unusual: to wit, the lights are on and somebody is home, and one should heed the judgments of the unconscious in navigating daily life. These judgments come in the form of gut reactions, simple rule-of-thumb feelings and intuitive responses that are empirically found to serve well. Contrasting these "gut feelings" to the rational information-processing/problem-solving perspective dominant in cognitive and social psychology for decades, Gigerenzer (Max Plank Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany) argues that individuals should follow hunches more than they do. Using myriad studies, he shows that one's (correct) responses are apt to be quick and instinctive, not logical and labored. Indeed, Malcolm Gladwell profiled Gigerenzer's findings in his immensely popular (if not particularly scholarly) book Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking (CH, Jul'05, 42-6795). Gut Feelings is a fine companion to Timothy Wilson's broader Strangers to Ourselves, which also views the unconscious as an adaptive companion but focuses more on the nature and consequences of (often limited) self-knowledge and understanding. Given Gigerenzer's real-world perspective on the role intuition plays in human affairs, all readers are bound to find something of interest herein. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers, all levels. D. S. Dunn Moravian College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
"Trust your hunches, for intuition does have an underlying rationale, according to this accessible account from a German scientist of human cognition. Permeated with everyday scenarios, such as picking stocks, schools, or spouses, the book adopts an evolutionary perspective of how people act on the basis of incomplete information (usually successfully). He sets the table with an example of a baseball player pursuing a fly ball, who relies not on conscious calculation but on an evolved gaze heuristic to make the catch. Definitions of such rules of thumb dot the text, which Gigerenzer embeds amid his presentations of studies that indicate, for example, that financial analysts don't predict markets any better than partially informed amateurs. Explaining this as an outcome of a recognition heuristic, Gigerenzer argues that knowing a little rather than everything about something is sufficient to take action on it. He forges on into medicine, law, and moral behavior, succeeding in the process in converting a specialized topic into a conduit for greater self-awareness among his readers."--"Taylor, Gilbert" Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Gigerenzer's theories about the usefulness of mental shortcuts were a small but crucial element of Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller Blink, and that attention has provided the psychologist, who is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, the opportunity to recast his academic research for a general audience. The key concept-rules of thumb serve us as effectively as complex analytic processes, if not more so-is simple to grasp. Gigerenzer draws on his own research as well as that of other psychologists to show how even experts rely on intuition to shape their judgment, going so far as to ignore available data in order to make snap decisions. Sometimes, the solution to a complex problem can be boiled down to one easily recognized factor, he says, and the author uses case studies to show that the "Take the Best" approach often works. Gladwell has in turn influenced Gigerenzer's approach, including the use of catchy phrases like "the zero-choice dinner" and "the fast and frugal tree," and though this isn't quite as snappy as Blink, well, what is? Closing chapters on moral intuition and social instincts stretch the central argument a bit thin, but like the rest will be easily absorbed by readers. Illus. (July 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Intuitions and hunches are neither wild guesses nor unreliable pathways to the truth, asserts German behavioral scientist Gigerenzer; they are generally dependable, though unconscious, techniques based on our evolved brain's structures and processes. Sounds a bit like Blink (2005), doesn't it? And no wonder, since Malcolm Gladwell based portions of his bestseller on research done by Gigerenzer and his associates at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Here, readers will find an engagingly brisk summary of current knowledge about the heuristics of intuition--the "rules of thumb" we often employ. How do outfielders know where a fly ball will come down? What are the differences between the intuitive powers of men and women? How do people who know very little about specialized fields like tennis or the stock market match the predictive powers of experts? How do peahens select peacocks? Why do people follow the crowd? These are among the questions Gigerenzer explores, assisted by numerous graphs, illustrations and optical effects. He points to research that locates in the brain a "judgment" area we use to "decide" whether to employ gut feelings to a given issue. Near the end, the author takes a close look at the quick judgments physicians must make, at the unconscious rules we use to guide our moral decisions, at the ways we yield to the imperatives of our families and social groups. Gigerenzer's prose--no translator is credited, so presumably he writes in English--is lively and at times even evocative. "Simplicity," he writes in his discussion of such traditional moral codes as the Ten Commandments, "is the ink with which effective moral systems are written." A pleasing, edifying tour of territory that has long been dark and unexplored. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
