Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Website – Penguin

Like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, Gut Feelings explores the circumstances under which intuitive decision-making has been shown to outperform rigorous and systematic reasoning. Gigerenzer is a psychologist and the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

The central idea of this book is that our brains have evolved to engage in intuitive decision making, and that sometimes what looks like sloppy thinking has underlying benefits. Take – for example – the fact that many times people are asked a question that they don’t know the answer to, but they exploit their selective ignorance in a way that allows them to not only outperform those more ignorant than they, but also those less ignorant. Gigerenzer uses the example of students asked whether Milwaukee or Detroit has a bigger population. Often those who’ve only heard of one of the cities will guess that the one they know is bigger, and this tends to be right more often than not. Students familiar with both cities (but not knowing the precise answer) are more likely to stumble.

The book suggests that we tend to decide based on one key factor rather than the full “pros and cons” list for which many teachers and leaders advocate. The book has a fascinating chapter on how this all applies to healthcare decision-making. It provides insight into why the American healthcare system is so screwed up (high cost, low health outcomes.)

If you are interested in decision-making and the divergence between what we are taught to do and what most of us actually do most of the time (and why,) I’d highly recommend this book.

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