NYT: Gut Feelings

Gut Instincts Should Guide Our Decisions, Scientist Says
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Two years ago, when Malcolm Gladwell published his best-selling book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” readers throughout the world were introduced to the ideas of Gerd Gigerenzer, a German social psychologist. Dr.Gigerenzer, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, is known in social science circles for his breakthrough studies on the nature of intuitive thinking. Before his research, this was a topic often dismissed as superstition. Dr. Gigerenzer, 60, was able to show how aspects of intuition work and how ordinary people successfully
use it in modern life. And now he has written his own book, “Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious,” which he hopes will sell as well as “Blink.” “I liked Gladwell’s book,”Dr.Gigerenzer said during a visit to New York City in July. “He’s popularized the issue, including my research.”
Q:O.K., let’s start with basics: what is a gut feeling?
A:It’s a judgment that is fast. It comes quickly into a person’s consciousness. The person doesn’t know why they have this feeling. Yet, this is strong enough to make an individual act on it. What a gut instinct isnot isacalculation.You do not fully know where it comes from. My research indicates that gut feelings are based on simple rules of thumb, what we psychologists term“heuristics.” These take advantage of certain capacities of the brain that have come down to us through time, experience and evolution. Gut instincts often rely on simple cues in the environment. In most situations,
when people use their instincts, they are heeding these cues.
Q:In modern society, gut thinking has a bad reputation. Why is that?
A:It is not thought to be rational. One of the founders of your country, Benjamin Franklin, suggested to his nephew that when
he made important life decisions, he should do it like a bookkeeper — list all the pros and cons and then make the decision,
after weighing everything. That is the classical rational approach.
Q:I make my decisions that way. What’s wrong with it?
A: In some situations, that demands too much information. Plus, it’s slow. When a person relies on their gut feelings and
uses the instinctual rule of thumb “go with your first best feeling and ignore everything else,” it can permit them to
outperform the most complex calculations.
Q:Where can gut instincts fail?
A:Here’s an example: after 9/11, many Americans stopped traveling in airplanes and drove on highways instead. I looked at the data, and it turned out that
in the year after the attacks, highway fatalities increased by an estimated 1,500 people. They had listened to their
fear,andsomore died on the road.These kinds of fatalities are easily avoided.
Q:Some of your critics say that gut instincts just aren’t scientific.
What’s your answer?
A:We study these things, where intuition is good and where it’s not. One should also not overlook that in science itself, you need intuitions. All successful research scientists function, to a degree, on gut instincts. They must make leaps, whether they have all the data or not.
Q:Do you think of yourself as intuitive or rational?
A:Both. In my scientific work, I have hunches. I can’t explain always why I think a certain path is the right way, but I need to trust it and go ahead. I also have the ability to check these hunches and find out what they are about. That’s the science part.Now, in private life, I rely on instinct. For instance, when I first met my wife, I didn’t do computations. Nor did she.