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Second Membership in the Section Global Health
Year of election: | 2001 |
Section: | Psychology and Cognitive Sciences |
City: | Berlin |
Country: | Germany |
Gerd Gigerenzer studies how people with limited time and information make decisions under uncertainty and deal with risk. Together with his interdisciplinary research group at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, he has identified heuristics that concentrate on the most important information and ignore the rest and, using analysis and computer simulation, has determined the environments in which particular heuristics are rational.
He has also shown how to improve understanding of risks by presenting information in a form that can be easily comprehended by the human brain. These results are applied to help doctors, judges, and other experts understand diagnostic tests and statistical reports and thus make better decisions.