„Our aim is to study how people behave in risk situations. We believe that our work can contribute towards the ideal of a society that knows how to calculate risks and live with them."
Gerd Gigerenzer
Should I have a flu vaccination or not? Is it safer to travel by car or by plane? Can early-detection screening tests for cancer prolong my life? Questions like these are the research focus of our team of scientists led by Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Center.
Gerd Gigerenzer is the former director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and author of numerous books, including "Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious" and "Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You".
Our goal is to help people in their struggle to understand and assess the risks facing them. Our primary focus is on health and medicine as well as on educating people from childhood onwards to understand statistics. By conducting studies, experiments, and surveys, we investigate people's problems with understanding numbers and find solutions to these. We also offer special training seminars for physicians and journalists, who need to know how to interpret and communicate risks to their patients and the general public.