Simple Heuristics in a Social World

Edited by Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group

Evolution and Cognition

Generalization of the research program on fast and frugal heuristics to the social world
Interdisciplinary group of authors (psychologists, economists, behavioral ecologists, political scientists, philosophers)
Includes "hot" topics such as medical decision making, decision making among children, social networks, mate choice, moral reasoning and behavior
Part of the Evolution and Cognition Series

Simple Heuristics in a Social World

Edited by Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group

Description

Simple Heuristics in a Social World invites readers to discover the simple heuristics that people use to navigate the complexities and surprises of environments populated with others. The social world is a terrain where humans and other animals compete with conspecifics for myriad resources, including food, mates, and status, and where rivals grant the decision maker little time for deep thought, protracted information search, or complex calculations. Yet, the social world also encompasses domains where social animals such as humans can learn from one another and can forge alliances with one another to boost their chances of success.
According to the book's thesis, the undeniable complexity of the social world does not dictate cognitive complexity as many scholars of rationality argue. Rather, it entails circumstances that render optimization impossible or computationally arduous: intractability, the existence of incommensurable considerations, and competing goals. With optimization beyond reach, less can be more. That is, heuristics--simple strategies for making decisions when time is pressing and careful deliberation an unaffordable luxury--become indispensible mental tools. As accurate as or even more accurate than complex methods when used in the appropriate social environments, these heuristics are good descriptive models of how people make many decisions and inferences, but their impressive performance also poses a normative challenge for optimization models. In short, the Homo socialis may prove to be a Homo heuristicus whose intelligence reflects ecological rather than logical rationality.

Simple Heuristics in a Social World

Edited by Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group

Evolution and Cognition

Contents

Part I The Research Agenda

1. Simple Heuristics: The Foundations of Adaptive Social Behavior
Ralph Hertwig and Ulrich Hoffrage

Part II Heuristics in Social Games

2. Simple Heuristics in a Social Game

Ralph Hertwig, Urs Fischbacher, and Adrian Bruhin

3. Trust-Your-Doctor: A Simple Heuristic in Need of a Proper Social Environment

Odette Wegwarth and Gerd Gigerenzer

4. Probabilistic Persuasion: A Brunswikian Theory of Argumentation

Torsten Reimer, Ralph Hertwig, amd Sanja Sipek

5. Cooperate with Equals: A Simple Heuristic for Social Exchange

Tim Johnson and Oleg Smirnov

6. The Is and Ought of Sharing: The Equality Heuristic Across the Lifespan

Monika Keller, Michaela Gummerum, Thomas Canz, Gerd Gigerenzer, and Masanori Takezawa

Part III Structures of Social Worlds

7. When Will We Meet Again? Regularities of Social Connectivity and Their Reflections in Memory and Decision Making

Thorsten Pachur, Lael J. Schooler, and Jeffrey R. Stevens

8. Fast Acceptance by Common Experience: Augmenting Schelling's Neighborhood Segregation Model with FACE-Recognition
Nathan Berg, Katarzyna Abramczuk, and Ulrich Hoffrage

Part IV Social Information, Collective Decision Making, and Social Learning

9. The Mind as an Intuitive Pollster: Frugal Search in Social Spaces

Thorsten Pachur, Ralph Hertwig, and Jörg Rieskamp

10. The "Less-is-More" Effect in Group Decision Making

Shengua Luan, Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos, and Torsten Reimer

11. Simple Heuristics and Information Sharing in Groups

Torsten Reimer and Ulrich Hoffrage

12. How to Find Good Cue Orderings: When Social Learning Benefits Simple Heuristics

Rocio Garcia-Retamero, Masanori Takezawa, Jan K. Woike, and Gerd Gigerenzer

13. The Advice of Others: When and How We Benefit From It

Guido Biele and Jörg Rieskamp

Part V Simple Heuristics and Social Rationality

14. The Evolutionary Rationality of Social Learning

Richard McElreath, Annika Wallin, and Barbara Fasolo

15. The Lives of Others: Social Rationality in Animals

Jeffrey R. Stevens and Andrew J. King

16. The Heart Has Its Reasons: Social Rationality in Mate Choice

Alison P. Lenton, Lars Penke, Peter Todd, and Barbara Fasolo

17. Can Simple Heuristics Explain Moral Inconsistencies?

Nadine Fleischhut and Gerd Gigerenzer

18. Why Simple Heuristics Make Life Both Easier and Harder: A Social-Psychological Perspective

Klaus Fiedler and Michaela Wänke

References

Name Index

Subject Index

Simple Heuristics in a Social World

Edited by Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group

Evolution and Cognition

Author Information

Ralph Hertwig is Director of the Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. He studies bounded and social rationality, experienced-based decision making, and the methodology of the social sciences. He was a recipient of the Heinz Heckhausen Young Scientist Prize and the Charlotte-und-Karl-Bühler Young Career Award.

Ulrich Hoffrage is Professor of Decision Theory and Risk, Graduate Business School of Economics (Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales; HEC), University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Contributors:

Contributors -- the ABC Research Group

The Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC) is an interdisciplinary research group founded in 1995 to study the psychology of bounded rationality and how good decisions can be made in an uncertain world.

Katarzyna Abramczuk
Institute of Political Studies
Polish Academy of Sciences

Nathan Berg
School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences
University of Texas at Dallas

Guido Biele
Department of Psychology
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Oslo

Adrian Bruhin
Swiss National Bank
Financial Stability

Thomas Canz
Institut zur Qualitätsentwicklung im Bildungswesen
Humboldt University of Berlin

Barbara Fasolo
Department of Management
The London School of Economics and Political Science

Klaus Fiedler
Psychologisches Institut
Universität Heidelberg

Urs Fischbacher
Department of Economics
University of Konstanz

Nadine Fleischhut
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC)
Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Rocío Garcia-Retamero
Faculty of Psychology
University of Granada

Gerd Gigerenzer
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC)
Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Michaela Gummerum
School of Psychology
Faculty of Science and Technology
University of Plymouth

Ralph Hertwig
Center for Cognitive and Decision Sciences
Department of Psychology
University of Basel

Ulrich Hoffrage
Faculty of Business and Economics
Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC)
University of Lausanne

Tim Johnson
Department of Political Science
Stanford University

Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC)
Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Monika Keller
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC)
Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Andrew J King
Structure and Motion Lab
The Royal Veterinary College, University of London

Alison P. Lenton
Department of Psychology
University of Edinburgh

Shenghua Luan
School of Social Sciences
Singapore Management University

Richard McElreath
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Davis

Thorsten Pachur
Center for Cognitive and Decision Sciences
Department of Psychology
University of Basel

Lars Penke
Department of Psychology and Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology
The University of Edinburgh
Department of Psychology

Torsten Reimer
Department of Communication
Purdue University

Jörg Rieskamp
Department of Psychology
University of Basel

Lael J. Schooler
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC)
Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Sanja Sipek
Department of Communication?
University of Maryland

Oleg Smirnov
Department of Political Science
Stony Brook University

Jeffrey R. Stevens
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC)
Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Masanori Takezawa
Department of Psychology
Sophia University

Peter M. Todd
Cognitive Science Program and School of Informatics and Computing
Indiana University

Annika Wallin
Cognitive Science
Lund University

Michaela Wänke
Marketing and Advertising Psychology
School of Social Sciences
University of Mannheim

Odette Wegwarth
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC)
Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Jan K. Woike
Faculty of Business and Economics
Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC)
University of Lausanne

Simple Heuristics in a Social World

Edited by Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group

Evolution and Cognition

Reviews and Awards

"Overall, Simple Heuristics in a Social World is both informative and inspiring. It will inform you of what is in the adaptive toolbox of social learning, stimulate your thinking about how best to model cognition and rationality, and inspire you with the sophisticated methodology of the social/ecological approach to cognition. ...this volume contains some excellent chapters that alone are worth your money for the whole book." --PsycCRITIQUES

"The book is big and it is dense with ideas, examples, analyses, and simulations."--Journal of Economic Psychology