Advice on stock market crashes, plane disasters and bad weather. Can you risk not reading this piece?

In his new book Risk Savvy, psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer argues that when it comes to taking risks in life, we are often much better off following our instincts than expert advice

At 66, the moustachioed psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer exudes strapping good health but that's not because he goes regularly to the doctor for checkups. "I follow the evidence," he says. "People who go to checkups: do fewer of them die from heart disease? From cancer? Or from any cause? The answer, three times: no. They just get more treatment, take more medication, and worry more often."

The Bavarian-born Gigerenzer though once a professional banjo player has spent decades studying risk, and he long ago concluded that the ways we attempt to cope with life's uncertainties including medical checkups can make matters worse. These days, when he is in an upmarket restaurant, he won't even bother opening the menu: asking the waiter what he or she would order is the only way to get what's best, he insists. For research purposes, he once tested an unlikely strategy for managing financial risk: instead of trusting the experts, as most people might, what if you stopped pedestrians at random, gave them a list of companies, asked which ones they had heard of, then just invested in those?

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