----- Original Message ----- On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:57:28 -0400, Christopher D. Green wrote: > Gerd Gigerenzer makes the New York Times. > (They call him a social psychologist, but I've always thought of him as > a cognitivist and statistician.) > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/science/28conv.html?ref=science
When I read articles like this (which seem to be increasing in number in the NY Times), I just have to shake my head while reading it. A few points: (1) It may just be my perception of the field but I think that the field/subarea of social psychology has become so expansive that it is difficult to determine what the criteria are for being a social psychologist. For example, I think of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman primarily as mathematical and cognitive psychologists yet it is not unusual to see their research presented as being part of "social cognition" (e.g., their "Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases" article is included in the book of reading on social cognition by David Hamilton; I think that the main thrust of Gigerenzer's position is that people use heuristics: does this position represent a math psych, cognitive psych, or a social psych or some combination of perspectives that may be too complicated for a popular science write to express in a sentence?). For additional headaches concerning these issues, take a look at the mushrooming field of "social neuroscience" (e.g., see Cacioppo et al's 2002 Foundation of Social Neuroscience with its 1300+ pages of coverage; in which discipline does this research fall?). Consequently, if Gerd Gigerenzer wants to call himself a social psychologist, I think he can because the term no longer seems to hava an exclusive meaning. (2) Am I the only one who is bothered by Gigerenzer's use of the term "instinct"? Perhaps my conception of what an instinct is is old-fashioned or in error but I thought that psychologists have tried to limit it to something like "fixed action patterns" initiated by specific stimuli. People seem to confuse this notion with "automatic processing": I have thought of instinct as a genetically based form of responding that just required the exposure to a specific stimulus for the behavior to occur (thus no learning is involved) while automatic processing, building upon the work of Schneider and Shiffrin and others, can be seen as learned behavior which requires little conscious attention/guidance because it is so overlearned that once the cognitive program is initiated or the cogntiive structure is activated, one doesn't have to supervise it. The key point is that an "instinct" is innate and not learned while "automatic processing" depends upon extensive learning and performance. In this framework, we may use certain heuristics automatically not because we a genetically programmed to do so but because we have learned to apply a rule or interpretation to a large number of situations and these have produced desirable results. More importantly, the traditional definition of instinct implies that it may undergo a process of habituation or inhibition but it can't be completely eliminated whereas a heuristic represents a rule that one can replace with another rule through dedicated practice (e.g., recognizing that baserates are important and need to be taken into account instead of ignoring them as shown in the conjunction fallacy aka the "Linda problem" where people think that its more likely Linda is both a librarian AND a feminist when the joint probability of this has to be less than the probability of being either a librarian or a feminist). (3) I haven't read "Blink" so I was a little surprised that only Gigerenzer's name was mentioned in connection to it. My understanding of "Blink" is that it is based on the theory and research that people automatically process information outside of consciousness and this affects their behavior even though the person is unaware of it (the NY Times had a article on this recently entitled "Minding the Mind" and is available on the www.nytimes.com website). However, I believe that Nisbett and Ross were the first to emphasize this viewpoint in the early 1970s and John Bargh has devoted most of his research to the topic of automatic processing in social situation for the past couple of decades. Does the author of "Blink" acknowledge these sources in addition to Gigerenzer's work? It's my impression that Gigerenzer is a relative latecomer to the field, perhaps most popularly known for his book "Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart" (2000) and subsequent books based on Herb Simon's notion of "bounded rationality" (my own familiarity with Gigerenzer is with his earlier work, such as his two volume "The Probabilitistic Revolution" and "Cognition as Intuitive Statistics" which, my gut tells me, probably haven't sold as well as his more recent books). The cynical person might argue that this NY Times article has less to do with substance than the promotion of the promotion of Gigerenzer's new book "Gut Feelings". However, if the cynical view is correct, students and others may not realize this especially since so little historical and theoretical context is provided. If my points above are correct (e.g., definition of "instinct", heuristics being based on learning in contrast to genetically fixed behavior patterns), then I have the feeling that we as teachers of psychology will have a whole new set of misconceptions to correct. Consider: Student: "My gut says...." Teacher: "Excuse me but let first say that what you're describing is that your interpretation is based on automatic cognitive processing in your brain and the phrase 'my gut tells me' is at best a metaphor to describe why you are making an automatic judgment or interpretation...." Student: "But I read in the New York Times that....." -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
