Does Logically Incoherent Decision-Making Really Have Negative Consequences?

Gerd Gigerenzer

As explained in this video it is commonly assumed that logically incoherent decision-making is irrational and costly in that it can lead e.g. to a decrease in happiness or health. An example for this would be a patient reacting differently if doctors speak of a 90% success rate of a surgery instead of a 10% failure rate for the same procedure. The purpose of the study presented here was to examine if there is proof in the existing literature that incoherent decision-making actually has negative consequences and is rightly seen as irrational. According to GERD GIGERENZER the findings suggest that the above mentioned assumption is not correct and that rationality needs to be re-defined in moving away from being based on strictly mathematical probabilities to taking context into account.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10288

Researcher

Gerd Gigerenzer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy, both in Berlin, Germany. His areas of interest include bounded rationality and social intelligence as well as decisions under uncertainty and time restrictions. For his work, he has received numerous awards, among them the AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research for the best article in the behavioral sciences, the Association of American Publishers Prize for the best book in the social and behavioral sciences, and the German Psychology Prize. Gigerenzer is also Batten Fellow at the Darden Business School, University of Virginia, and Fellow of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German Academy of Sciences.

Does Logically Incoherent Decision-Making Really Have Negative Consequences?

Researcher

Original Publication

How Bad is Incoherence?

Hal R. Arkes

Gerd Gigerenzer

Ralph Hertwig