WHAT ARE FAST AND FRUGAL HEURISTICS?

Fast and frugal heuristics meet the criteria set forth in Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 2002. Fast and frugal heuristics are rules of thumb for decision making that are:

1. Ecologically rational (that is, they exploit structures of information in the environment)
2. Founded in evolved psychological capacities such as memory and the perceptual system
3. Fast, frugal, and simple enough to operate effectively when time, knowledge, and computational might are limited
4. Precise enough to be modeled computationally
5. Powerful enough to model both good and poor reasoning.

WHERE CAN I READ ABOUT FAST AND FRUGAL HEURISTICS?

Fast and Frugal heuristics are mentioned in:

• BOOKS

  • Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart by Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd & the ABC Research Group
  • Ecological Rationality: Intelligence in the World by Peter M. Todd, Gerd Gigerenzer & the ABC Research Group
  • Simple Heuristics in a Social World by Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and the ABC Research Group
  • Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

• SCHOLARLY ARTICLES

  • Gigerenzer, G. & Goldstein, D. G. (1996). Reasoning the Fast and Frugal Way: Models of Bounded Rationality, Psychological Review
  • Goldstein, D. G. & Gigerenzer, G. (2002).Models of Ecological Rationality: The Recognition Heuristic, Psychological Review
  • Scheibehenne, B., Rieskamp, J., & Wagenmakers, E. J. (2013). Testing Adaptive Toolbox Models: A Bayesian Hierarchical Approach, Psychological Review
  • Forster, M. R. (1999) How Do Simple Rules Fit to reality in a Complex World?, Minds and Machines

• WEBSITES

  • Decision Science News a website about decision research in Psychology, Economics, Business, Medicine & Law

• PRESS

  • The Unpolitical Animal: How political science understands voters. article in The New Yorker by Louis Menand
  • The Moment of Truth in the New York Review of Books by Sue M. Halpern
  • Simple Minds, Smart Choices in Science News by Bruce Bower