Daniel Kahneman
Israeli-American psychologist of judgement and decision-making
Psychologist who worked at the Hebrew University, the University of British Columbia, Berkeley and Princeton. With Amos Tversky he studied judgement under uncertainty and developed prospect theory. He shared the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Why this person matters
Kahneman and Tversky showed that people rely on heuristics that produce systematic errors, which brought psychology into economics. Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) carried the work to a wide audience, and its chapter on priming has since been questioned.
Main contributions
Heuristics and biases with Tversky
Their 1974 Science paper on cognitive illusions in judgement started a cascade of related research. The work showed that intuitive judgement rests on simple rules that usually work but can produce systematic biases.
Prospect theory
The final version was published in Econometrica in 1979 with Amos Tversky. UBC's memorial notice says it was developed through their collaboration. It aimed to explain choices that depart from standard economic models.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Published in 2011, the book became a best seller and summarised much of his research for general readers.
Context and limits
Tversky died in 1996, before the 2002 prize. In 2017 Ulrich Schimmack, Moritz Heene and Kamini Kesavan analysed the priming studies cited in chapter 4 of Thinking, Fast and Slow (12 articles, 31 studies) and reported a combined R-Index of 14, which they read as weak evidence. Kahneman replied that he had "placed too much faith in underpowered studies" and that the chapter's evidence was weaker than he had believed. Retraction Watch notes that this was not a retraction.
In your introductory course
Thinking, language and intelligence.Appears in the thinking and decision-making sections of cognition chapters (heuristics, framing, loss aversion) and in discussions of the replication crisis.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 7.3. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1961
Became a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
- 1974
Published the Science paper on cognitive illusions with Amos Tversky.
- 1979
Published prospect theory in Econometrica with Amos Tversky.
- 2002
Shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Vernon L. Smith.
- 2011
Published Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Sources
- University of British Columbia Department of Psychology, In Memoriam: Dr. Daniel KahnemanUniversity. Institutional biography inspected.
- Retraction Watch, Placed too much faith in underpowered studies: Nobel Prize winner admits mistakes (20 February 2017)Reference work. Text passages inspected.
- Replicability-Index, Reconstruction of a Train Wreck: How Priming Research Went off the Rails (2 February 2017)Original work. Text passages inspected.
- Wikipedia, Daniel KahnemanReference work. Reference article inspected.