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Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious | 
| Author: Gerd Gigerenzer
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $6.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 6676
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.7 x 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.44
ASIN: B0014T9NDG
Publication Date: July 5, 2007
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Product Description
An engaging explanation of the science behind Malcolm Gladwells bestselling Blink
Gerd Gigerenzer is one of the researchers of behavioral intuition responsible for the science behind Malcolm Gladwells bestseller Blink. Gladwell showed us how snap decisions often yield better results than careful analysis. Now, Gigerenzer explains why our intuition is such a powerful decision-making tool. Drawing on a decade of research at the Max Plank Institute, Gigerenzer demonstrates that our gut feelings are actually the result of unconscious mental processesprocesses that apply rules of thumb that weve derived from our environment and prior experiences. The value of these unconscious rules lies precisely in their difference from rational analysisthey take into account only the most useful bits of information rather than attempting to evaluate all possible factors. By examining various decisions we makehow we choose a spouse, a stock, a medical procedure, or the answer to a million-dollar game show questionGigerenzer shows how gut feelings not only lead to good practical decisions, but also underlie the moral choices that make our society function.
In the tradition of Blink and Freakonomics, Gut Feelings is an exploration of the myriad influences and factors (nature and nurture) that affect how the mind works, grounded in cutting-edge research and conveyed through compelling real-life examples.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Great read June 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Amazing! An academic who writes clear and simple prose about a complex subject. What a treat!
Robert Wachal, Professor Emeritus
Gut Feelings/Blink June 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Haven't had a chance to read the whole book yet, just starting, but it looks like something everyone should be interested in, am paying a lot more attention to my instincts/subconscious now and feel the book is well worth your time.
Making sense of the social brain April 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Why are amateurs better than professionals at picking stocks? Why are 99.9 percent of French citizens registered as organ donors but only 28 percent of Americans? How did a simple rumor bring down the Berlin Wall?
Gigerenzer focuses primarily on the advantages intuition and instinct bestow on us, using "rules of thumb" to guide behavior. Whether we're trying to catch a baseball, make a killing on the stock market, or choose a spouse, instinct is more useful than analytic thinking.
A professor of psychology and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Gigerenzer divides his book in two sections, "Unconscious Intelligence" and "Gut Feelings in Action." The first includes a discussion of how intuition works, why less is more, and the importance of forgetting. He discusses sharing, doing unto others as they do unto you, and why too much logic can spoil a good decision.
When a group of Americans and a group of Germans were asked which city had the most population, Detroit or Milwaukee, the Germans overwhelmingly beat the Americans. Why? Because the Germans had never heard of Milwaukee so they went with the city they had heard of. This same "rule of thumb" is why amateurs so often beat analysts when it comes to stock picking and why brand names work.
As for the organ donor question - in France people have to opt out of the program, in the U.S. people have to opt in. If there is a default, people defer to it, no matter how simple it is to go another way.
The second section shows how rules of thumb work in areas like health care (less is more), politics (name recognition, one good reason is enough), romance, and morality.
Sometimes, Gigerenzer shows, gut feelings let us down, as in mob mentality, when people are reluctant to detach from the group. But the power of wishful thinking brought down the Berlin Wall when rumor and desire combined to convince a vast swarm that the wall was open - therefore it was.
Conversational, well organized, and backed with lots of experiments and studies, Gigerenzer's book is an enjoyable, thought-provoking, practical view of human nature at work.
Accessible! March 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Much of the material here, was in Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer other earlier books, which included difficult words like Heuristic, in their titles.
This has the potential to be a truly popular book, which is a boom to individuals who are trying to understand why they and others react the way they do, often apparently illogically.
the substance missing from Blink February 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
when reading Gladwell's Blink, I kept hoping that by the end of the book something about how my brain worked would be revealed. Well, I got a sense that the Blink-like decisions I made on a daily basis are more common than I thought and with a wider scope (racism etc). What was incredibly disappointing about Blink was that I walked away with no more insight. yes some examples were articulated, but this in some ways was not really the promise of the book. the promise of walking away with something concrete is fulfilled in Gut feelings, which is almost like a response to Blink; the author is saying to Gladwell "this is how its done, young jedi!". Get this book if you want to know why you fight with your spouse or why you get along with them. get this book if you want to understand how to improve yourself by having more insight into how your brain is wired. get this book and his other book on Risk, and you will become a better person. not a cheap promise.
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