Gerd Gigerenzer
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Gerd Gigerenzer, long-time director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, is director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam, and vice-president of the European Research Council (ERC). He is former Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and John M. Olin Distinguished Visiting Professor, School of Law, University of Virginia. He is member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences and Honorary Member of the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Basel, the Open University of the Netherlands, and the University of Southampton. Awards include the AAAS Prize for the best article in the behavioral sciences, the German Psychology Award, and the Communicator Award of the German Research Foundation. His award-winning popular books Calculated Risks, Gut Feelings, Risk Savvy, and How To Stay Smart In A Smart World have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has trained U.S. federal judges, physicians, and top managers in decision making. The Swiss Duttweiler Institute has distinguished Gigerenzer as one of the top-100 Global Thought Leaders worldwide.
Gerd Gigerenzer joins the Paris IAS in November 2025 for a one-month writing residency.
Research topics
Heuristic Decision Making; Risk Communication; Intelligence of Intuition.
What is bias? And why are we biased?
The research project first analyzes the different ways in which the term bias is used and the assumptions about rationality underlying each. Apparent contradictions exist in evaluation of the same behavior, such as when relying on base rate information is considered rational on the basis of Bayes’ rule but considered irrational because it appears to reflect prejudice in judging other people. A second step is to analyze the apparent contradiction between the “heuristics-and-biases” program in behavioral economics, where rationality is assumed to be achieved when bias is zero, and the bias–variance dilemma in machine learning, where rationality is assumed to require a non-zero bias because there is a trade-off between bias and variance (the latter is the sensitivity of a prediction to the peculiarities of the data sample, a term corresponding to overfitting). From the perspective of the bias–variance dilemma, a certain amount of bias is a condition of rationality rather than an indication of irrationality.
One hypothesis is that this apparent contradiction can be resolved by introducing the distinction made by Leonard J. Savage and Herbert A. Simon between small (closed) worlds and large (uncertain) worlds, Specifically, the hypothesis is that bias is detrimental only in small worlds, where the complete set of future states of the world along with their consequences and probabilities are known beyond doubt. In all other situations that involve a substantial degree of uncertainty, bias might be necessary and functional, or even rational.
Key publications
Gerd Gigerenzer. The intelligence of intuition. Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Gerd Gigerenzer. How to stay smart in a smart world: Why human intelligence still beats algorithms. Penguin, 2022.
Gerd Gigerenzer. Simply rational: Decision making in the real world. Oxford University Press, 2015.
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