Gut feelings (Penguin Books)

In "Gut Feelings: Short Cuts to Better Decision Making" psychologist and behavioural expert Gerd Gigerenzer reveals the secrets of fast and effective decision-making. A sportsman can catch a ball without calculating its speed or distance.

A group of amateurs beat the experts at playing the stock market. A man falls for the right woman even though she's 'wrong' on paper. All these people succeeded by trusting their instincts - but how does it work? As Gerd Gigerenzer explains, in an uncertain world, sometimes we have to ignore too much information and rely on our brain's 'short cut', or heuristic.

By explaining how intuition works and analyzing the techniques that people use to make good decisions - whether it's in personnel selection or heart surgery - Gigerenzer will show you the hidden intelligence of the unconscious mind.

"Fascinating and provocative..."Gut Feelings" may well be the recipe for a simpler, less stressful life". ("Sunday Times"). "Gigerenzer's writing is catchily optimistic and slyly funny...Devilish".

(Steven Poole, "Guardian"). "The science behind the phenomenon cited in the bestseller "Blink"...useful and clearly written". ("Business Week")."Gigerenzer is brilliant".

(Stephen Pinker). Gerd Gigerenzer is Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and former Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago.

He has published two academic books on heuristics, "Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart" and "Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox" as well as a popular science book, "Reckoning with Risk".