Gerd Gigerenzer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy in Berlin. He is former Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and John M. Olin Distinguished Visiting Professor, School of Law at the University of Virginia. He is also Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Sciences, and Batten Fellow at the Darden Business School, University of Virginia. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Basel and the Open University of the Netherlands. Awards for his work include the AAAS Prize for the best article in the behavioral sciences, the Association of American Publishers Prize for the best book in the social and behavioral sciences, the German Psychology Award and the Communicator Award of the German Research Foundation. His award-winning popular books Calculated Risks, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, and Risk Savvy: How to make good decisions have been translated into 21 languages. His academic books include Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart, Rationality for Mortals, and Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox (with Reinhard Selten, a Nobel Laureate in economics). In Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions (with Sir Muir Gray) he shows how better informed doctors and patients can improve healthcare while reducing costs. Together with the Bank of England, he works on the project “Simple heuristics for a safer world.” Gigerenzer has trained U.S. Federal Judges, German physicians, and top managers in decision-making and understanding risks and uncertainties.
Title: Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions
Abstract: Remember the volcanic ash cloud over Iceland? The subprime disaster? How about mad cow disease? Each new crisis makes us worry until we forget and start worrying about the next one. When something goes wrong, we are told that the way to prevent further crisis is better technology, more laws, and bigger bureaucracy. How to protect ourselves from the threat of terrorism? Homeland security, full body scanners, further sacrifice of individual freedom. How to counteract exploding costs in health care? Tax hikes, rationalization, better genetic markers. One idea is absent from these lists: risk-savvy citizens. And there is a reason. Many experts have concluded that people are basically hopeless when it comes to risk, and need continuous “nudging,” just like a child needs a parent. Against this pessimistic view, I will argue that everyone can learn to deal with risk and uncertainty, and that experts are often part of the problem rather than the solution. A democracy needs risk-savvy citizens who cannot be easily frightened into surrendering their money, their welfare, and their liberty.
