Daniel Kahneman
Encyclopedia
Daniel Kahneman (born March 5, 1934) is an Israel
i-American psychologist
and Nobel laureate. He is notable for his work on the psychology
of judgment
and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology
.
With Amos Tversky
and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristic
s and biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973; Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), and developed prospect theory
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work in prospect theory
.
Currently, he is professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University
's Woodrow Wilson School. Kahneman is a founding partner of The Greatest Good, a business and philanthropy consulting company. Kahneman is married to Royal Society Fellow Anne Treisman
.
in the early 1920s.
Kahneman and his family were in Paris when it was occupied by Nazi Germany
in 1940. His father was picked up in the first major round-up of French Jews, but was released after six weeks due to the intervention of his employer. The family was on the run for the remainder of the war, and survived intact except for the death of Kahneman's father of diabetes in 1944. Daniel Kahnemann and his family then moved to Palestine
(which was soon to become Israel
) in 1948 (Kahneman, 2003).
Kahneman has written of his experience in Nazi-occupied France
, explaining in part why he entered the field of psychology:
and a minor in mathematics
from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
in 1954. After earning his undergraduate degree, he served in the psychology department of the Israeli Defense Forces. One of his responsibilities was to evaluate candidates for officer's training school, and to develop tests and measures for this purpose. In 1958, he went to the United States to study for his Ph.D. degree
in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley
.
in 1961. He was promoted to senior lecturer in 1966.
His early work focused on visual perception and attention. For example, his first publication in the prestigious journal Science was entitled "Pupil Diameter and Load on Memory" (Kahneman & Beatty, 1966). During this period, Kahneman was a visiting scientist at the University of Michigan
(1965–66) and the Applied Psychological Research Unit in Cambridge
(1968/1969, summers). He was a fellow at the Center for Cognitive Studies and a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University
in 1966/1967.
. Together, Kahneman and Tversky published a series of seminal articles in the general field of judgment and decision-making, culminating in the publication of their prospect theory
in 1979 (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2002 for his work on prospect theory, and it is generally regarded as a given that Tversky would also have received the prize had he still been alive (he died in 1996).
In his Nobel biography, Kahneman states that his collaboration with Tversky began after Kahneman had invited Tversky to give a guest lecture to one of Kahneman's seminars at Hebrew University in 1968 or 1969. Their first jointly-authored paper, "Belief in the Law of Small Numbers," was published in 1971 (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971). They published seven articles in peer-reviewed journals in the years 1971–1979. Aside from "Prospect Theory," the most important of these articles was "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), which was published in the prestigious journal Science
and introduced the notion of anchoring
.
Kahneman left Hebrew University in 1978 to take a position at the University of British Columbia
. This move had little or no immediate effect on his collaborations with Tversky, for Tversky moved on to Stanford University
that same year.
in the academic year 1977–1978. A young economist named Richard Thaler
was a visiting professor at the Stanford branch of the National Bureau of Economic Research
during that same year. According to Kahneman, "[Thaler and I] soon became friends, and have ever since had a considerable influence on each other's thinking" (Kahneman, 2003, p. 437). Building on Prospect theory
and Kahneman and Tversky's body of work, Thaler published "Toward a Positive Theory of Consumer Choice" in 1980, a paper which Kahneman has called "the founding text in behavioral economics" (Kahneman, 2003, p. 438).
Kahneman and Tversky both became heavily involved in the development of this new approach to economic theory, and their involvement in this movement had the effect of reducing the intensity and exclusivity of their earlier period of joint collaboration. Although they would continue to publish together until the end of Tversky's life, their years of near-exclusive collaboration were coming to an end.
The period when Kahneman published almost exclusively with Tversky began to wind down in 1983, when Kahneman published two papers with Anne Treisman
, his wife since 1978.
movement, which was steadily gaining in popularity at the time. According to Kahneman and colleagues,
It is difficult to determine precisely when Kahneman's research began to focus on hedonics, although it likely stemmed from his work on the economic notion of utility
. After publishing multiple articles and chapters in all but one of the years spanning the period 1979–1986 (for a total of 23 published works in 8 years), Kahneman published exactly one chapter during the years 1987–1989. After this hiatus, articles on utility
and the psychology of utility
began to appear (e.g. Kahneman & Snell, 1990; Kahneman & Thaler, 1991; Kahneman & Varey, 1991). In 1992, Varey and Kahneman introduced the method of evaluating moments and episodes as a way to capture "experiences extended across time." While Kahneman continued to study decision-making (e.g. Kahneman, 1992, 1994; Kahneman & Lovallo, 1993), hedonic psychology was the focus of an increasing number of publications (e.g. Fredrickson & Kahneman, 1993; Kahneman, Fredrickson, Schreiber & Redelemeier, 1993; Kahneman, Wakker & Sarin, 1997; Redelmeier & Kahneman, 1996), culminating in a volume co-edited with Ed Diener
and Norbert Schwarz
, two of the most established and esteemed scholars of affect and well-being (Kahneman, Diener & Schwarz, 1999).
Together with David Schkade, Kahneman developed the notion of the focusing illusion (Kahneman & Schkade, 1998; Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz & Stone, 2006) to explain in part the mistakes people make when estimating the effects of different scenarios on their future happiness (also known as affective forecasting
, which has been studied extensively by Daniel Gilbert). The "illusion" occurs when people consider the impact of one specific factor on their overall happiness, they tend to greatly exaggerate the importance of that factor, while overlooking the numerous other factors that would in most cases have a greater impact. A good example is provided by Kahneman and Schkade's 1998 paper "Does living in California make people happy? A focusing illusion in judgments of life satisfaction." In that paper, students in the Midwest and in California reported similar levels of life satisfaction, but the Midwesterners thought their Californian peers would be happier. The only distinguishing information the Midwestern students had when making these judgments was the fact that their hypothetical peers lived in California. Thus, they "focused" on this distinction, thereby overestimating the effect of the weather in California on its residents' satisfaction with life.
's Department of Psychology
and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
. He is also a fellow at Hebrew University and a Gallup
Senior Scientist.
, fellow professor of psychology at Princeton University.
Radio Interviews
On-line Interviews
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i-American psychologist
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and Nobel laureate. He is notable for his work on the psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
of judgment
Judgment
A judgment , in a legal context, is synonymous with the formal decision made by a court following a lawsuit. At the same time the court may also make a range of court orders, such as imposing a sentence upon a guilty defendant in a criminal matter, or providing a remedy for the plaintiff in a civil...
and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology
Happiness economics
Happiness economics is the quantitative study of happiness, positive and negative affect, well-being, quality of life, life satisfaction and related concepts, typically combining economics with other fields such as psychology and sociology. It typically treats such happiness-related measures,...
.
With Amos Tversky
Amos Tversky
Amos Nathan Tversky, was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a pioneer of cognitive science, a longtime collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement...
and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristic
Heuristic
Heuristic refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution, where an exhaustive search is impractical...
s and biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973; Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), and developed prospect theory
Prospect theory
Prospect theory is a theory that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk i.e. where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The model is descriptive: it tries to model real-life choices, rather than optimal decisions.-Model:...
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work in prospect theory
Prospect theory
Prospect theory is a theory that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk i.e. where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The model is descriptive: it tries to model real-life choices, rather than optimal decisions.-Model:...
.
Currently, he is professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
's Woodrow Wilson School. Kahneman is a founding partner of The Greatest Good, a business and philanthropy consulting company. Kahneman is married to Royal Society Fellow Anne Treisman
Anne Treisman
Anne Marie Treisman FRS is a psychologist currently at Princeton University's Department of Psychology. She researches visual attention, object perception, and memory. One of her most influential ideas is the feature integration theory of attention, first published with G. Gelade in 1980...
.
Early years
Daniel Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv in 1934, while his mother was visiting relatives. He spent his childhood years in Paris, France, where his parents had emigrated from LithuaniaLithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
in the early 1920s.
Kahneman and his family were in Paris when it was occupied by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
in 1940. His father was picked up in the first major round-up of French Jews, but was released after six weeks due to the intervention of his employer. The family was on the run for the remainder of the war, and survived intact except for the death of Kahneman's father of diabetes in 1944. Daniel Kahnemann and his family then moved to Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
(which was soon to become Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
) in 1948 (Kahneman, 2003).
Kahneman has written of his experience in Nazi-occupied France
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
, explaining in part why he entered the field of psychology:
It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of DavidYellow badgeThe yellow badge , also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism...
and to obey a 6 p.m. curfewCurfewA curfew is an order specifying a time after which certain regulations apply. Examples:# An order by a government for certain persons to return home daily before a certain time...
. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others – the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting (Kahneman, 2003, p. 417).
Education and military service
Kahneman received his B. Sc. with a major in psychologyPsychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and a minor in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
in 1954. After earning his undergraduate degree, he served in the psychology department of the Israeli Defense Forces. One of his responsibilities was to evaluate candidates for officer's training school, and to develop tests and measures for this purpose. In 1958, he went to the United States to study for his Ph.D. degree
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
.
Cognitive psychology
Kahneman began his academic career as a lecturer in psychology at the Hebrew University of JerusalemHebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
in 1961. He was promoted to senior lecturer in 1966.
His early work focused on visual perception and attention. For example, his first publication in the prestigious journal Science was entitled "Pupil Diameter and Load on Memory" (Kahneman & Beatty, 1966). During this period, Kahneman was a visiting scientist at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
(1965–66) and the Applied Psychological Research Unit in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
(1968/1969, summers). He was a fellow at the Center for Cognitive Studies and a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1966/1967.
Judgment and decision-making
This period marks the beginning of Kahneman's lengthy collaboration with Amos TverskyAmos Tversky
Amos Nathan Tversky, was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a pioneer of cognitive science, a longtime collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement...
. Together, Kahneman and Tversky published a series of seminal articles in the general field of judgment and decision-making, culminating in the publication of their prospect theory
Prospect theory
Prospect theory is a theory that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk i.e. where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The model is descriptive: it tries to model real-life choices, rather than optimal decisions.-Model:...
in 1979 (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2002 for his work on prospect theory, and it is generally regarded as a given that Tversky would also have received the prize had he still been alive (he died in 1996).
In his Nobel biography, Kahneman states that his collaboration with Tversky began after Kahneman had invited Tversky to give a guest lecture to one of Kahneman's seminars at Hebrew University in 1968 or 1969. Their first jointly-authored paper, "Belief in the Law of Small Numbers," was published in 1971 (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971). They published seven articles in peer-reviewed journals in the years 1971–1979. Aside from "Prospect Theory," the most important of these articles was "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), which was published in the prestigious journal Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
and introduced the notion of anchoring
Anchoring
Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.-Background:...
.
Kahneman left Hebrew University in 1978 to take a position at the University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
. This move had little or no immediate effect on his collaborations with Tversky, for Tversky moved on to Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
that same year.
Behavioral economics
Kahneman and Tversky were both fellows at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford UniversityStanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in the academic year 1977–1978. A young economist named Richard Thaler
Richard Thaler
Richard H. Thaler is an American economist and the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business...
was a visiting professor at the Stanford branch of the National Bureau of Economic Research
National Bureau of Economic Research
The National Bureau of Economic Research is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community." The NBER is well known for providing start and end...
during that same year. According to Kahneman, "[Thaler and I] soon became friends, and have ever since had a considerable influence on each other's thinking" (Kahneman, 2003, p. 437). Building on Prospect theory
Prospect theory
Prospect theory is a theory that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk i.e. where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The model is descriptive: it tries to model real-life choices, rather than optimal decisions.-Model:...
and Kahneman and Tversky's body of work, Thaler published "Toward a Positive Theory of Consumer Choice" in 1980, a paper which Kahneman has called "the founding text in behavioral economics" (Kahneman, 2003, p. 438).
Kahneman and Tversky both became heavily involved in the development of this new approach to economic theory, and their involvement in this movement had the effect of reducing the intensity and exclusivity of their earlier period of joint collaboration. Although they would continue to publish together until the end of Tversky's life, their years of near-exclusive collaboration were coming to an end.
The period when Kahneman published almost exclusively with Tversky began to wind down in 1983, when Kahneman published two papers with Anne Treisman
Anne Treisman
Anne Marie Treisman FRS is a psychologist currently at Princeton University's Department of Psychology. She researches visual attention, object perception, and memory. One of her most influential ideas is the feature integration theory of attention, first published with G. Gelade in 1980...
, his wife since 1978.
Hedonic psychology
In the nineties, Kahneman's research focus began to gradually shift in emphasis towards the field of "hedonic psychology." This subfield is closely related to the positive psychologyPositive psychology
Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in...
movement, which was steadily gaining in popularity at the time. According to Kahneman and colleagues,
"Hedonic psychology...is the study of what makes experiences and life pleasant or unpleasant. It is concerned with feelings of pleasure and pain, of interest and boredom, of joy and sorrow, and of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. It is also concerned with the whole range of circumstances, from the biological to the societal, that occasion suffering and enjoyment." (Kahneman, Diener & Schwarz, 1999, p. ix)
It is difficult to determine precisely when Kahneman's research began to focus on hedonics, although it likely stemmed from his work on the economic notion of utility
Utility
In economics, utility is a measure of customer satisfaction, referring to the total satisfaction received by a consumer from consuming a good or service....
. After publishing multiple articles and chapters in all but one of the years spanning the period 1979–1986 (for a total of 23 published works in 8 years), Kahneman published exactly one chapter during the years 1987–1989. After this hiatus, articles on utility
Utility
In economics, utility is a measure of customer satisfaction, referring to the total satisfaction received by a consumer from consuming a good or service....
and the psychology of utility
Utility
In economics, utility is a measure of customer satisfaction, referring to the total satisfaction received by a consumer from consuming a good or service....
began to appear (e.g. Kahneman & Snell, 1990; Kahneman & Thaler, 1991; Kahneman & Varey, 1991). In 1992, Varey and Kahneman introduced the method of evaluating moments and episodes as a way to capture "experiences extended across time." While Kahneman continued to study decision-making (e.g. Kahneman, 1992, 1994; Kahneman & Lovallo, 1993), hedonic psychology was the focus of an increasing number of publications (e.g. Fredrickson & Kahneman, 1993; Kahneman, Fredrickson, Schreiber & Redelemeier, 1993; Kahneman, Wakker & Sarin, 1997; Redelmeier & Kahneman, 1996), culminating in a volume co-edited with Ed Diener
Ed Diener
Edward Diener is an American psychologist, professor, and author. He is noted for his research over the past twenty-five years on happiness — the measurement of well-being; temperament and personality influences on well-being; theories of well-being; income and well-being; and cultural...
and Norbert Schwarz
Norbert Schwarz
Norbert Schwarz is the Charles Horton Cooley Collegiate Professor of Psychology in the Social Psychology program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He also has appointments as Professor of Marketing at the Ross School of Business, Research Professor in the Program in Survey Methodology and...
, two of the most established and esteemed scholars of affect and well-being (Kahneman, Diener & Schwarz, 1999).
Together with David Schkade, Kahneman developed the notion of the focusing illusion (Kahneman & Schkade, 1998; Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz & Stone, 2006) to explain in part the mistakes people make when estimating the effects of different scenarios on their future happiness (also known as affective forecasting
Affective forecasting
Affective forecasting is the forecasting of one's affect in the future. This kind of prediction is affected by various kinds of cognitive biases, or systematic errors of thought also known as "empathy gap" and "impact bias"....
, which has been studied extensively by Daniel Gilbert). The "illusion" occurs when people consider the impact of one specific factor on their overall happiness, they tend to greatly exaggerate the importance of that factor, while overlooking the numerous other factors that would in most cases have a greater impact. A good example is provided by Kahneman and Schkade's 1998 paper "Does living in California make people happy? A focusing illusion in judgments of life satisfaction." In that paper, students in the Midwest and in California reported similar levels of life satisfaction, but the Midwesterners thought their Californian peers would be happier. The only distinguishing information the Midwestern students had when making these judgments was the fact that their hypothetical peers lived in California. Thus, they "focused" on this distinction, thereby overestimating the effect of the weather in California on its residents' satisfaction with life.
Teaching
Kahneman is currently a senior scholar and faculty member emeritus at Princeton UniversityPrinceton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
's Department of Psychology
Princeton University Department of Psychology
The Princeton University Department of Psychology, located in Green Hall, is an academic department of Princeton University on the corner of Washington St. and William St. in Princeton, New Jersey. For over a century, the department has been one of the most notable psychology departments in the...
and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school has granted undergraduate A.B. degrees since 1930 and graduate degrees since 1948...
. He is also a fellow at Hebrew University and a Gallup
The Gallup Organization
The Gallup Organization, is primarily a research-based performance-management consulting company. Some of Gallup's key practice areas are - Employee Engagement, Customer Engagement and Well-Being. Gallup has over 40 offices in 27 countries. World headquarters are in Washington, D.C. Operational...
Senior Scientist.
Personal life
Daniel Kahneman is married to Anne TreismanAnne Treisman
Anne Marie Treisman FRS is a psychologist currently at Princeton University's Department of Psychology. She researches visual attention, object perception, and memory. One of her most influential ideas is the feature integration theory of attention, first published with G. Gelade in 1980...
, fellow professor of psychology at Princeton University.
Honors and awards
- In 2002, Kahneman received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, despite being a research psychologistPsychologistPsychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, for his work in Prospect theoryProspect theoryProspect theory is a theory that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk i.e. where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The model is descriptive: it tries to model real-life choices, rather than optimal decisions.-Model:...
. Kahneman states he has never taken a single economics course – that everything that he knows of the subject he and Tversky learned from their collaborators Richard ThalerRichard ThalerRichard H. Thaler is an American economist and the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business...
and Jack Knetsch.
- Kahneman, co-recipient with Amos Tversky, earned the 2003 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology.
- In 2005, he was voted the 101st-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website YnetYnetYnet is the most popular Israeli news and general content website. It is owned by the same conglomerate that operates Yediot Ahronot, the country's secondleading daily newspaper...
to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.
- In 2007, he was presented with the American Psychological Association's Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology.
- On November 6, 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the department of Economics at Erasmus UniversityErasmus UniversityErasmus University Rotterdam is a university in the Netherlands, located in Rotterdam. The university is named after Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a 15th century humanist and theologian...
in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In his acceptance speech Kahneman said, "when you live long enough, you see the impossible become reality." He was referring to the fact that he would never have expected to be honored as an economist when he started his studies into what would become Behavioral Economics.
- In 2011, he made the Bloomberg 50 most influential people in global finance.
Notable contributions
- Anchoring and adjustment
- Attribute substitutionAttribute substitutionAttribute substitution is a psychological process thought to underlie a number of cognitive biases and perceptual illusions. It occurs when an individual has to make a judgment that is computationally complex, and instead substitutes a more easily calculated heuristic attribute...
- Availability heuristicAvailability heuristicThe availability heuristic is a phenomenon in which people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind....
- Base rate fallacyBase rate fallacyThe base rate fallacy, also called base rate neglect or base rate bias, is an error that occurs when the conditional probability of some hypothesis H given some evidence E is assessed without taking into account the "base rate" or "prior probability" of H and the total probability of evidence...
- Conjunction fallacyConjunction fallacyThe conjunction fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one.The most often-cited example of this fallacy originated with Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:...
- Framing (economics)
- Loss aversionLoss aversionIn economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Some studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains....
- Optimism biasOptimism biasOptimism bias is the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be overly optimistic about the outcome of planned actions. This includes over-estimating the likelihood of positive events and under-estimating the likelihood of negative events. Along with the illusion of control and illusory...
- Peak-end rulePeak-end ruleAccording to the peak-end rule, we judge our past experiences almost entirely on how they were at their peak and how they ended. Other information is not lost, but it is not used. This includes net pleasantness or unpleasantness and how long the experience lasted.In one experiment, one group of...
- Planning fallacyPlanning fallacyThe planning fallacy is a tendency for people and organizations to underestimate how long they will need to complete a task, even when they have experience of similar tasks over-running. The term was first proposed in a 1979 paper by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky...
- Preference reversal
- Prospect theoryProspect theoryProspect theory is a theory that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk i.e. where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The model is descriptive: it tries to model real-life choices, rather than optimal decisions.-Model:...
- Cumulative prospect theoryCumulative prospect theoryCumulative prospect theory is a model for descriptive decisions under risk which was introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1992 . It is a further development and variant of prospect theory...
- Reference class forecastingReference class forecastingReference class forecasting is the method of predicting the future, through looking at similar past situations and their outcomes.Reference class forcasting predicts the outcome of a planned action based on actual outcomes in a reference class of similar actions to that being forecast. The theories...
- Representativeness heuristicRepresentativeness heuristicThe representativeness heuristic is a psychological term describing a phenomenon wherein people judge the probability or frequency of a hypothesis by considering how much the hypothesis resembles available data as opposed to using a Bayesian calculation. While often very useful in everyday life, it...
- Simulation heuristicSimulation heuristicThe simulation heuristic is a psychological heuristic, or simplified mental strategy, according to which people determine the likelihood of an event based on how easy it is to picture the event mentally. Partially as a result, people regret more missing outcomes that had been easier to imagine,...
- Status quo biasStatus quo biasThe status quo bias is a cognitive bias for the status quo; in other words, people tend not to change an established behavior unless the incentive to change is compelling...
Publications
Note: This is only a partial list of Kahneman's publications, which are very numerous. Publications were selected for their importance (as indexed by citation counts) and/or representativeness.- Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (1982). Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Kahneman, D., Diener, E., & Schwarz, N. (Eds.). (1999). Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
- Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (Eds.). (2000). Choices, values and frames. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow (ISBN 978-0374275631) publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 25, 2011)
Interviews with Kahneman
- 'Can We Trust Our Intuitions?' in Alex Voorhoeve Conversations on Ethics. Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-921537-9 (Discusses Kahneman's views about the reliability of moral intuitions [case judgments] and the relevance of his work for the search for 'reflective equilibrium' in moral philosophy.)
Radio Interviews
- All in the Mind, ABC, Australia (2003) http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/s923773.htm
- All in the Mind, BBC, Great Britain (2011) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qxx9
On-line Interviews
- Thinking about Thinking - An Interview with Daniel Kahneman (2011) http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/thinking-about-thinking/
See also
- List of economists
- List of Jewish Nobel laureates
- Optimism biasOptimism biasOptimism bias is the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be overly optimistic about the outcome of planned actions. This includes over-estimating the likelihood of positive events and under-estimating the likelihood of negative events. Along with the illusion of control and illusory...
- Planning fallacyPlanning fallacyThe planning fallacy is a tendency for people and organizations to underestimate how long they will need to complete a task, even when they have experience of similar tasks over-running. The term was first proposed in a 1979 paper by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky...
- Amos TverskyAmos TverskyAmos Nathan Tversky, was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a pioneer of cognitive science, a longtime collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement...
External links
- Daniel Kahneman official website
- Maps of Bounded Rationality 2002 lecture at NobelPrize.org
- Profile and Papers at Research Papers in EconomicsResearch Papers in EconomicsResearch Papers in Economics is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 57 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, journal articles and software components. The project started...
(RePEc) - Lecture on "The riddle of experience vs. memory" at TED, February 2010