“The walls of the foyer were a riot of colors from paint bombs”

Gerd Gigerenzer is one of the most renowned psychologists in Germany. The LMU alumnus was director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, among other roles, and is currently director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam. In our interview, the 77-year-old talks about his student days at LMU during the 1968 protest movement, the optimization pressures on the social media generation, and how artificial intelligence can manipulate our knowledge.

Mr. Gigerenzer, you’re 77 years old and, as your books and more demonstrate, you’re often more at home in the digital world than many digital natives. How do you manage this?

I’m curious by nature. And as I studied statistics alongside psychology at LMU, it’s easier for me to see through many phenomena of the digital world – such as ChatGPT: a statistical machine.

In what ways was education then different to education today?

In my day, psychology courses had a very loose structure and students were treated like adults. There were hardly any prescriptions telling us what literature we should read. For me, this freedom was a welcome challenge; it helped me to think independently. Others coped less well with the freedom. But when you are curious, you find your way by yourself. Later, I lived and taught in the United States for many years. Undergraduate studies there are usually much more school-like, even down to calling the students “kids.”

You did your doctorate and then your habilitation degree at LMU. What do you remember from your student days?

When I walked through the gates of LMU for the first time in 1969, the communard Fritz Teufel was playing soccer in the foyer with political friends – and the walls were a riot of colors from paint bombs. It was the time of Marxist groupings – many students were politically active. I had to fund my studies myself – my parents were simple folk. I lived on the money I earned as a jazz musician – including an advert for the first Volkswagen Golf, which ran in Germany and the United States (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxss-xGI0rw). As such, music was the safe option for me initially, and an academic career was the risky move. But I took the plunge and chose science.

Otherwise, you would presumably not have met your wife Lorraine Daston, who is a renowned historian of science.

We got to know each other by chance in Bielefeld in 1982 – at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, where we were attending a one-year workshop about chance and probability in science and everyday life. It was about how chance has changed our thinking in physics, social science, and even sport – for some people today, statistics are more important than the game itself. Through my wife, I learned to appreciate the history of the sciences and to reflect critically on why we use certain methods and consider certain questions to be important. The historical perspective was scarcely developed in the social sciences back then – and this largely remains the case today.

As a student, every decision sets the course for one’s future life. Many people feel increasingly overwhelmed by this.

Although the feeling of being overwhelmed is by no means new, technological inventions like recommendation systems are significantly exacerbating it. When looking for a mate, for example, we used to concentrate on a few people and try to get to know them. Today, apps like Tinder confront us with hundreds of potential partners – and that overwhelms many people. We call that FOBO: fear of better options. The constant attempt to optimize everything and only to be satisfied by what is supposedly the best – that’s a recipe for dissatisfaction.

You advise people to listen more to their intuitions.

When I had to decide between a career as a musician or as a professor, it was not possible to calculate the future – I was faced with a decision under conditions of uncertainty. In such a situation, you need intuition: a form of unconscious intelligence. However, intuition works best when you have a lot of experience in an area.

Wars, crises, and political polarization: Young people in particular are viewing the future with anxiety. Many have stopped following the news for this reason. Is this a good idea?

Sticking one’s head in the sand – no. Naturally, we live in difficult times. But when I was at LMU in the 1970s, the Cold War was going on and we lived in constant fear of nuclear armageddon. My mother had only just turned 17 when the Second World War broke out. My grandfather fought as a young man in France in the First World War – and woke up with nightmares for the rest of his life. A carefree youth? That was granted to very few. Ultimately, we’re all faced with the question: Do I want to take control over my own destiny, or just be entertained?

Do social media intensify anxiety?

The problem is not social media as such, but the business models of the large tech companies. In 2004, Facebook was a fairly relaxed affair: You checked out the homepages of friends every so often. But this was too little activity for the advertisers – and the newsfeed was introduced. Hundreds of thousands of users protested, as the newsfeed turned private messages into objects of mass consumption and targets for scorn and hatred. But the change was implemented anyway. Personal privacy was replaced by the desire to get as many likes as possible. We know these mechanisms from experimental psychology – classical and operant conditioning. Because of the dopamine release, we swipe and scroll without knowing afterwards what we’ve actually done. It’s a massive loss of time and control. A whole generation is being conditioned in this way. If users were to pay with money instead of with their time – without taking the indirect route via the advertisers – social media would most likely become more social and relaxed again.

In the “Bad Statistic of the Month” series, you and three colleagues regularly scrutinize statistical claims. Which ones have annoyed you the most?

We analyze media reports in which data is deliberately or ignorantly misrepresented. For example, Elon Musk recently claimed that 79 percent of all asylum applicants spent vacations in their home countries. However, the figure actually referred to people who had moved to Sweden over the past 80 years, mostly in the 1970s – it was not a study about asylum applicants. Musk was trying to stir up outrage, and he succeeded. Women have also been misled for years when it comes to mammograms. Studies show that breast screening does not lengthen lives on average, but can lead to unnecessary anxieties, biopsies, and breast operations. And yet it is advertised as a lifesaver – radiologists, clinics, and device manufacturers earn billions every year from it.

Can artificial intelligence help us evaluate facts in a more rational manner?

AI always depends on the people who develop and control it. One example: Elon Musk recently claimed that a genocide of white people is taking place in South Africa. Resourceful users asked his chatbot Grok whether this was true. Grok contradicted him based on public statistics. But the next day, Grok was asserting the opposite. This shows how easily chatbots can be manipulated – by those who own them. So we shouldn’t allow ourselves to get worked up by the story of an all-powerful superintelligence that could pose a threat to us humans. Such narratives are often designed to generate attention and fear, and to distract us from actual problems. The real danger does not come from AI, but from the ultrarich billionaires who control it.

You have received numerous awards, and the Swiss Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute has named you as one of the 100 most influential thinkers in the world. Have you ever considered enjoying a well-earned retirement?

I enjoy my work – it gives me a lot of pleasure. And I also spend a lot of time with my family, pursue my hobbies, and do not allow my life to be dominated by screens. Many years ago, I gave away my television set, and I use social media almost exclusively for work. This not only saves times, but leaves space for what truly matters. Everybody has the power to decide whether they keep educating themselves or just wallow in entertainment.

Profile: Gerd Gigerenzer did his undergraduate studies and obtained his PhD and habilitation degree at LMU in the late 1970s and early ’80s. From 1984 to 1990, he was Professor of Psychology at the University of Konstanz. After several years at the Universities of Salzburg and Chicago, Gigerenzer moved to Munich in 1995 as director at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, before becoming director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin in 1997. In 2008, he additionally took on the reins of the newly founded Harding Center for Risk Literacy in Berlin, which has belonged to the University of Potsdam since 2020. Since the start of 2024, he has been Vice President of the European Research Council (ERC).