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SUMMARY:Homo heuristicus: Why biased minds make better inferences - Profes
 sor Gerd Gigerenzer\, Director\, Max Planck Institute for Human Developmen
 t\, Berlin
DTSTART:20090601T163000Z
DTEND:20090601T180000Z
UID:TALK18472@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Arciris Garay Arevalo
DESCRIPTION:Heuristics are efficient cognitive processes that ignore infor
 mation. In contrast to the widely held\nview that less processing reduces 
 accuracy\, the study of heuristics shows that less information\, computati
 on\, and time can in fact improve accuracy. We review the major progress m
 ade so\nfar: (a) the discovery of less-is-more effects\; \n(b) the study o
 f the ecological rationality of heuristics\, which examines in which envir
 onments a given strategy succeeds or fails\, and why\;\n(c) an advancement
  from vague labels to computational models of heuristics\; \n(d) the devel
 opment 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 \n(e) the development o
 f an empirical methodology that accounts for individual differences\, cond
 ucts competitive tests\, and has provided evidence for people's adaptive u
 se of heuristics. Homo heuristicus has a biased mind and ignores part of t
 he available information\, yet a biased mind can handle uncertainty more e
 fficiently and robustly than an unbiased mind relying on more resource-int
 ensive and general-purpose\nprocessing strategies.
LOCATION:Babbage Lecture Theatre - New Museums Site
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