新思想来源于何处?什么是社会智能?无知如何转变为悟性?为什么社会科学家们会盲目地采用无头脑的统计学仪式?这本重要著作对这些问题做出了精辟回答。它将理性作为适应性思维进行重新思考，这种思维重在理解头脑是如何应付其周围环境的，包括自然的和社会的。总之，本书收集的论文发展了这样的思想：人类思维——从科学创造到理解艾滋病病毒检测结果意味着什么——部分地“发生”于头脑外部。
在本书中，吉仁泽教授提出并详细说明了探讨理性心理学问题的一项大胆而新颖的研究方案。生态理性、有限理性、社会理性等颇具创意的概念为研究人类理性提供了一种全新的理论框架。其独到的见解和论述将关于人类思维、社会智能、创造性及决策制定等问题的研究从一个虚无缥缈的梦幻世界一一在那里逻辑和概率规则统御着一切——迎回了启发式和社会动机发挥作用的现实世界中来。
《适应性思维》一本书适合对心理学、认知科学、统计学、经济学、社会学、哲学、人工智能和动物行为等研究领域感兴趣的广大读者阅读。它也为医生、艾滋病咨询师、刑法专家等实践工作者如何理解和交流不确定性和风险信息提供了可行的方案。

Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive to understand how minds cope with their environments, both ecological and social.

Gerd Gigerenzer proposes and illustrates a bold new research program that investigates the psychology of rationality, introducing the concepts of ecological, bounded, and social rationality. His path-breaking collection takes research on thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decision-making out of an ethereal world where the laws of logic and probability reign, and places it into our real world of human behavior and interaction. Adaptive Thinking is accessibly written for general readers with an interest in psychology, cognitive science, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also teaches a practical audience, such as physicians, AIDS counselors, and experts in criminal law, how to understand and communicate uncertainties and risks.

在《简捷启发式让我们更精明》中，作者开宗明义地指出，人类和动物的理性是有限的（既不是非理性的，又不是纯理性的），但这种有限理性已足以使他们在现实环境中作出合理判断和决策。现实环境并不苛求人类和动物，也就是说并不要求人类和动物时时处处都作出最优化选择和决策，所以任何人都不必为自己理性资源的有限而忐忑不安。相反，那种奢望通过无限理性实现最优化目标的理想主义者反而是不合时宜的！这并不是说《简捷启发式让我们更精明》作者希望无限制地降低人类理性的目标，将人类还原到低等动物的理性水平。他们对理性的最低要求是：能够与现实环境（包括自然和社会环境）的要求相匹配！当它能够做到这一点时，从生态学角度看就已经足够了。这种理性被称为“生态理性”。一个重要的假设是：有机体是否有理性或其作出的判断和决策是否合理，应该用现实的外在标准来判断，而不是用唯智论者所推崇的不切实际的理想标准来判断。不存在与现实环境相脱离的不着边际的抽象理性，如果有，它对有机体适应现实环境也是毫无价值的。只有当与环境的现实要求结合起来考察人类和动物理性时，才能找到评判理性的合理标准，这个标准就是“生态合理性”。
提出一种观点是容易的，展开和证明一种观点却是困难的。难能可贵的是，适应行为与认知研究组从上述关于人类理性的基本观点出发，形成了连贯严密的研究方案，并从诸多学科领域为其观点累积了丰富证据。既然只有当理性被付诸实际使用时，才具有适应价值，才能提供评判它的机会，于是《简捷启发式让我们更精明》作者首先从两个方面对有机体需要使用理性资源加以解决的现实问题作了分类：首先，他们按照有机体通常面对的认知问题将有关任务分为选择、记忆、数量估计、归类等类别；其次，他们按照现实生活中有机体面对的现实适应性问题将有关任务分为食物选择、配偶选择、父母投资以及从动作推断意图等类别。如果说人类和动物的理性是有限的，那么当面临上述诸多现实任务时，他们就应该且必须采用简捷而“精明”的方法来配置和使用其资源；如果说人类和动物的理性具有生态合理性的话，那么也只有在他们“精明地”配置和使用其有限理性资源时，才能够做到这一点。所以，“有限理性”和“生态理性”这两个术语成了适应行为与认知研究组的中心概念，它们双双携手使得有机体在现实环境中采用“快速节俭的”简捷启发式成为必要。有机体是否采用简捷启发式呢？他们可能采用哪些简捷启发式呢？他们何时采用简捷启发式呢？简捷启发式在现实环境中的成效如何呢？弄清楚了这些问题，关于有限理性和生态理性的命题也就得到了检验。正由于如此，对这些问题的回答构成了《简捷启发式让我们更精明》的主要内容。

Why is split second decision-making superior to deliberation? Gut Feelings delivers the science behind Malcolm Gladwell??s Blink
Reflection and reason are overrated, according to renowned psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer. Much better qualified to help us make decisions is the cognitive, emotional, and social repertoire we call intuition??a suite of gut feelings that have evolved over the millennia specifically for making decisions. ??Gladwell drew heavily on Gigerenzer??s research. But Gigerenzer goes a step further by explaining just why our gut instincts are so often right. Intuition, it seems, is not some sort of mystical chemical reaction but a neurologically based behavior that evolved to ensure that we humans respond quickly when faced with a dilemma?? (BusinessWeek).

《成败就在刹那间》中，作者以深入浅出的方式，为我们讲述了一个个隐藏在看似平凡无奇的现象下面的那些奇妙心理学原理，让我们开始理解，所谓的直觉，蕴含着怎样的心理机制和生理基础。书中还穿插了许许多多经典的试验和真实案例，不会让人读起来感觉冗长乏味；在作者的生花妙笔和巧妙布局之下，他将一个个心理学原理在决策领域的应用娓娓道来。如果没有《成败就在刹那间》，你恐怕这辈子也不会去思考为什么自己会在超市中把手伸向那些最耳熟能详的商品，也不会想到自己在最终确定终身伴侣的那一刻，大脑究竟做出了怎样精密的计算。《成败就在刹那间》，就像是一把钥匙，打开了我们尘封多年的好奇心，让我们可以摒弃掉成人世界中的理智和逻辑，重新用一双充满疑问的眼睛来看待这个世界，看待那些自己平时早已见怪不怪的行为，也重新开始思索“为什么会是这样”而不再漠然地接受“事实本该如此”。

Why is split second decision-making superior to deliberation? Gut Feelings delivers the science behind Malcolm Gladwell??s Blink
Reflection and reason are overrated, according to renowned psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer. Much better qualified to help us make decisions is the cognitive, emotional, and social repertoire we call intuition??a suite of gut feelings that have evolved over the millennia specifically for making decisions. ??Gladwell drew heavily on Gigerenzer??s research. But Gigerenzer goes a step further by explaining just why our gut instincts are so often right. Intuition, it seems, is not some sort of mystical chemical reaction but a neurologically based behavior that evolved to ensure that we humans respond quickly when faced with a dilemma?? (BusinessWeek).

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart invites readers to embark on a new journey into a land of rationality that differs from the familiar territory of cognitive science and economics. Traditional views of rationality tend to see decision makers as possessing superhuman powers of reason, limitless knowledge, and all of eternity in which to ponder choices. To understand decisions in the real world, we need a different, more psychologically plausible notion of rationality, and this book provides it. It is about fast and frugal heuristics--simple rules for making decisions when time is pressing and deep thought an unaffordable luxury. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices, classifications, and predictions by employing bounded rationality. But when and how can such fast and frugal heuristics work? Can judgments based simply on one good reason be as accurate as those based on many reasons? Could less knowledge even lead to systematically better predictions than more knowledge? Simple Heuristics explores these questions, developing computational models of heuristics and testing them through experiments and analyses. It shows how fast and frugal heuristics can produce adaptive decisions in situations as varied as choosing a mate, dividing resources among offspring, predicting high school drop out rates, and playing the stock market. As an interdisciplinary work that is both useful and engaging, this book will appeal to a wide audience. It is ideal for researchers in cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science, as well as in economics and artificial intelligence. It will also inspire anyone interested in simply making good decisions.

Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adaptation to the real world of human behavior and interaction with the environment. Seen from this perspective, human behavior is more rational than it might otherwise appear. This work is extremely influential and has spawned an entire research program.

This volume (which follows on a previous collection, Adaptive Thinking , also published by OUP) collects his most recent articles, looking at how people use "fast and frugal heuristics" to calculate probability and risk and make decisions. It includes a newly writen, substantial introduction, and the articles have been revised and updated where appropriate. This volume should appeal, like the earlier volumes, to a broad mixture of cognitive psychologists, philosophers, economists, and others who study decision making.