Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T12:18:50.433Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Intelligence as Smart Heuristics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2009

Robert J. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Jean E. Pretz
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Get access

Summary

The great end of life is not knowledge but action

Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895)

Humans and other animals differ in the amount of intelligence ascribed to them or that can be tested. Observed behavior reflects the underlying cognitive abilities of the individual that are either thought of as a general device system or a system of more or less independent parts. On this continuum, the view of intelligence as fast and frugal heuristics orientates toward a concept that models intelligence as parts (tools) of a larger system (adaptive toolbox). This view departs from the notion of intelligence as an assembly of “factors”: either one (g), a few, or many. The idea that one could model the intelligence of a person by the values of one or several factors became prominent after the invention of factor analysis, a statistical tool, in the early twentieth century. A key problem with this tool-driven metaphor of intelligence is that it does not describe how cognition translates into behavior. The consequence of this missing link is that the usefulness of factor values to predict behavior is quite limited (Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Bundy, 2001). More importantly, the exclusive focus on paper-and-pencil tasks has estranged the notion of intelligence from the abilities and heuristics that are relevant for everyday behavior as well as for solving the problems that experts struggle with.

In this chapter, we propose a radically different view of intelligence that links cognition with behavior in terms of heuristics.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cognition and Intelligence
Identifying the Mechanisms of the Mind
, pp. 188 - 207
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Axelrod, R. M. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York: Basic Books
Ayton, P., & Önkal, D. (1997). Forecasting football fixtures: Confidence and judged proportion correct. Unpublished manuscript
Borges, B., Goldstein, D. G., Ortmann, A., & Gigerenzer, G. (1999). Can ignorance beat the stock market? In G. Gigerenzer, P. Todd, & ABC Research Group (Eds.), Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 59–74). New York: Oxford University Press
Boyd, R., & Lorberbaum, J. P. (1987). No pure strategy is evolutionary stable in the repeated prisoner's dilemma game. Nature, 327, 58–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2001). Norms and bounded rationality. In G. Gigerenzer & R. Selten (Eds.), Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox (pp. 281–296). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Bröder, A. (2000). Assessing the empirical validity of the “Take-the-Best” heuristic as a model of human probabilistic inference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1332–1346Google ScholarPubMed
Bröder, A. (2003). Decision making with the adaptive toolbox: Influence of environmental structure, intelligence, and working memory load. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 611–625Google ScholarPubMed
Cosmides, C. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 31, 187–276CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cosmides, C., & Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 163–228). New York: Oxford University Press
Cosmides, C., & Tooby, J. (2002). Unraveling the enigma of human intelligence: Evolutionary psychology and the multimodular mind. In R. J. Sternberg & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The evolution of intelligence (pp. 145–198). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
Czerlinski, J., Gigerenzer, G., & Goldstein, D. G. (1999). How good are simple heuristics? In G. Gigerenzer, P. Todd, & ABC Research Group (Eds.), Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 97–118). New York: Oxford University Press
Dawkins, R. (1989). The selfish gene. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
Duchaine, B., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2001). Evolutionary psychology and the brain. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 11, 225–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dugatkin, L. A. (1996). Interface between culturally based preferences and genetic preferences: Female mate choice in Poecilia Reticulata. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 93, 2770–2773CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fodor, J. A. (1987). Modules, frames, frigeons, sleeping dogs, and the music of spheres. In J. R. Garfield (Ed.), Modularity in knowledge and representation and natural-language understanding (pp. 25–36). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Galef, B. G. Jr. (1987). Social influences on the identification of toxic foods by Norway rats. Animal Learning & Behavior, 15, 327–332CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galef, B. G. Jr., McQuoid, L. M., & Whiskin, E. E. (1990). Further evidence that Norway rats do not socially transmit learned aversions to toxic baits. Animal Learning & Behavior, 18, 199–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books
Gardner, H., Kornhuber, M. L., & Wake, W. K. (1996). Intelligence: Multiple perspectives. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace
Gigerenzer, G. (1997). The modularity of social intelligence. In A. Whiten & R. W. Byrne (Eds.), Machiavellian intelligence II (pp. 264–288). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University PressCrossRef
Gigerenzer, G. (2000). Adaptive thinking: Rationality in the real world. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
Gigerenzer, G., & Goldstein, D. G. (1999). Betting on one good reason: The Take The Best Heuristic. In G. Gigerenzer, P. M. Todd, & ABC Research Group (Eds.), Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 75–95). New York: Oxford University Press
Gigerenzer, G., & Hug, K. (1992). Domain-specific reasoning: Social contracts, cheating, and perspective change. Cognition, 43, 127–171CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gigerenzer, G., & Selten, R. (2001). Rethinking rationality. In G. Gigerenzer & R. Selten (Eds.), Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox (pp. 1–12). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., & Krüger, L. (1989). The empire of chance. How probability changed science and everyday life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University PressCrossRef
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P., & ABC Research Group (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford University Press
Goldstein, D. G., & Gigerenzer, G. (2002). Models of ecological rationality: The recognition heuristic. Psychological Review, 109, 75–90CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoffrage, U., Hertwig, R., & Gigerenzer, G. (2000). Hindsight bias: A by-product of knowledge updating? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 566–581Google ScholarPubMed
Hossner, E. J. (1995). Module der Motorik [Motor Modules]. Schorndorf, Germany: Hofmann
Hubbard, A. W., & Seng, S. N. (1954). Visual movements of batters. Research Quarterly of American Association of Health and Physical Education, 25, 42–57Google Scholar
Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor. Westport, CT: Praeger
Johnson, J., & Raab, M. (2003). Take the first: Option generation and resulting choices. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 91, 215–229CrossRef
Keele, S. W., Jennings, P., Jones, S., Caulton, D., & Cohen, A. (1995). On the modularity of sequence representation. Journal of Motor Behavior, 27, 17–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, G., Wolf, S., Militello, L., & Zsambok, C. (1995). Characteristics of skilled option generation in chess. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 62, 63–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kollock, P. (1994). The emergence of exchange structures: An experimental study of uncertainty, commitment, and trust. American Journal of Sociology, 100, 313–345CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kummer, H., Daston, L., Gigerenzer, G., & Silk, J. B. (1997). The social intelligence hypothesis. In P. Weingarten, S. D. Mitchell, P. J. Richardson, & S. Maasen (Eds.), Human by nature: Between biology and the social sciences (pp. 157–179). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
Laland, K. N. (2001). Imitation, social learning, and preparedness as mechanisms of bounded rationality. In G. Gigerenzer & R. Selten (Eds.), Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox (pp. 233–247). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Marsh, B. (2002). Heuristics as social tools. New Ideas in Psychology, 20, 49–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martignon, L., & Hoffrage, U. (1999). Why does one-reason decision making work? A case study in ecological rationality. In G. Gigerenzer, P. Todd, & ABC Research Group, Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 119–140). New York: Oxford University Press
Martignon, L., & Hoffrage, U. (2002). Fast, frugal, and fit: Simple heuristics for paired comparisons. Theory and Decision, 52, 29–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLeod, P., & Dienes, Z. (1996). Do fielders know where to go to catch the ball or only how to get there? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22, 531–543Google Scholar
Messick, D. M., & Liebrand, W. B. G. (1995). Individual heuristics and the dynamics of cooperation in large groups. Psychological Review, 102, 131–145CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, G. F., & Todd, P. M. (1998). Mate choice turns cognitive. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2, 190–198CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newell, B., & Shanks, D. R. (in press). Take-the-best or look at the rest? Factors influencing ‘one-reason’ decision making. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and CognitionGoogle Scholar
Newell, B., Rakow, T., Weston, N. J., & Shanks, D. R. (2004). Search strategies in decision-making: The success of “success.”Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 17, 117–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noble, J., & Todd, P. M. (2002). Imitation or something simpler? Modelling simple mechanisms for social information processing. In K. Dautenhahn & C. Nehaniv (Eds.), Imitation in animals and artifacts (pp. 423–440). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Payne, J. W., Bettman, J. R., & Johnson, E. J. (1993). The adaptive decision maker. New York: Cambridge University Press
Rieskamp, J., & Hoffrage, U. (1999). When do people use simple heuristics and how can we tell? In G. Gigerenzer, P. Todd, & ABC Research Group (Eds.), Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 141–167). New York: Oxford University Press
Savelsbergh, G. J. P., Whiting, H. T. A., & Bootsma, R. J. (1991). Grasping tau. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17, 315–322Google ScholarPubMed
Seeley, T. D., & Buhrmann, S. C. (2001). Nest-site selection in honey bees: How well do swarms implement the ‘best-of-N’ decision rule? Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 49, 416–427CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selten, R. (2001). What is bounded rationality? In G. Gigerenzer & R. Selten (Eds.), Bounded rationality (pp. 13–36). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Shephard, R. N. (2001). On the possibility of universal mental laws: A reply to my critics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 712–748CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1955). A behavioral model of rational choice. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 69, 99–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1956). Rational choice and the structure of environments. Psychological Review, 63, 129–138CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, R. E. (1994). A person–situation interaction theory of intelligence in outline. In A. Demetriou & A. Efklides (Eds.), Intelligence, mind, and reasoning: Structure and development (pp. 11–28). Amsterdam: North-HollandCrossRef
Sternberg, R. J. (1999). Intelligence as developing expertise. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 24, 359–375CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sternberg, R. J., & Kaufman, J. C. (Eds.). (2002). The evolution of intelligence. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L., & Bundy, D. A. (2001). The predictive value of IQ. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 47, 1–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Y., & Frost, B. J. (1992). Time to collision is signaled by neurons in the nucleus rotundus of pigeons. Nature, 356, 236–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, G. C. (1996). Adaptation and natural selection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×