Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-02T19:39:39.772Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - Biases: Mistaking Intuition for Irrationality

from Part I - The War on Intuition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2023

Gerd Gigerenzer
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Get access

Summary

Behavioral economics began with the promise to fill the psychological blind spot in neoclassical theory, and ended up portraying intuition as the source of irrationality. The portrait goes like this: people have systematic cognitive biases causing substantial costs, biases are persistent like visual illusions and hardly educable, therefore governments need to step in and steer people with the help of “nudges.” The biases have taken on the status of truism. In contrast, I show that this view of human nature is tainted by a “bias bias,” the tendency to spot biases even if there are none. This involves failing to notice when sample parameters differ from population parameters, mistaking people’s random error for systematic error, and confusing intelligent inferences with logical errors. I use celebrated biases to explain the general problem. Getting rid of the bias bias will be a precondition for a positive role of human intuition and psychology in general.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×