IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/medema/v16y1996i3p273-280.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Psychology of Good Judgment

Author

Listed:
  • Gerd Gigerenzer

Abstract

Mind and environment evolve in tandem—almost a platitude. Much of judgment and decision making research, however, has compared cognition to standard statistical models, rather than to how well it is adapted to its environment. The author argues two points. First, cognitive algorithms are tuned to certain information formats, most likely to those that humans have encountered during their evolutionary history. In par ticular, Bayesian computations are simpler when the information is in a frequency format than when it is in a probability format. The author investigates whether fre quency formats can make physicians reason more often the Bayesian way. Second, cognitive algorithms need to operate under constraints of limited time, knowledge, and computational power, and they need to exploit the structures of their environments. The author describes a fast and frugal algorithm, Take The Best, that violates standard principles of rational inference but can be as accurate as sophisticated "optimal" mod els for diagnostic inference. Key words: Bayes' theorem; bounded rationality; infor mation format; probabilistic reasoning; satisficing; training; medical education. (Med Decis Making 1996;16:273-280)

Suggested Citation

  • Gerd Gigerenzer, 1996. "The Psychology of Good Judgment," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 16(3), pages 273-280, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:16:y:1996:i:3:p:273-280
    DOI: 10.1177/0272989X9601600312
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X9601600312
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0272989X9601600312?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Osimani, Barbara, 2012. "Risk information processing and rational ignoring in the health context," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 169-179.
    2. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Anwesha Mukherjee & Theodore L. Turocy, 2020. "That’s the ticket: explicit lottery randomisation and learning in Tullock contests," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 88(3), pages 405-429, April.
    3. Andrew J Lloyd, 2003. "Threats to the estimation of benefit: are preference elicitation methods accurate?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(5), pages 393-402, May.
    4. Shin KINOSHITA & Masayuki SATO & Takanori IDA, 2022. "Bayesian Probability Revision and Infection Prevention Behavior in Japan : A Quantitative Analysis of the First Wave of COVID-19," Discussion papers e-22-004, Graduate School of Economics , Kyoto University.
    5. Sjöberg, Lennart, 2002. "The distortion of beliefs in the face of uncertainty," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Business Administration 2002:9, Stockholm School of Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:16:y:1996:i:3:p:273-280. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.