The psychologist’s work casting doubt on the rationality of decision-making helped spawn the field of behavioral economics and won him a Nobel Prize.
Already a subscriber?Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist whose work casting doubt on the rationality of decision-making helped spawn the field of behavioral economics and won him a Nobel Prize, has died. He was 90.The New YorkerKahneman upended assumptions about rationality that had dominated economics for decades. He was able to show the logic behind puzzling behaviours –, or why they will drive to a distant store to save money on a small item, but not to make the same saving on an expensive one.
, Kahneman isolated biases that distort decision-making. These include aversion to loss and how the way a question is framed can affect the answer. For example, if a health program will save 200 lives and result in 400 deaths, whether it is accepted may depend on whether its proponents highlight the lives saved or the lives lost.Kahneman said that the brain reacts quickly and on the basis of incomplete information, often with unfortunate results.
Daniel Kahneman was born on March 5, 1934, in Tel Aviv, where his mother was visiting relatives. The family lived in France, having emigrated there from Lithuania. His father, a Jewish chemist, was arrested because of his religion during World War II, then released. After the war, the family moved to Palestine.
“Amos and I shared the wonder of together owning a goose that could lay golden eggs – a joint mind that was better than our separate minds,” Kahneman wrote. “I have probably shared more than half the laughs of my life with Amos.”New York TimesTheir collaboration produced papers, books and innovative experiments such as the ultimatum game, in which a person is given money on the condition that they share it with a second person.
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