Person in News: Daniel Kahneman

Context

Daniel Kahneman, one of the pioneers of psychology and economics research recently passed away.

Daniel Kahneman

• About Kahneman: Daniel Kahneman was a psychologist who did some of his best known work with Amos Tversky, a mathematical psychologist who passed away in 1996.
• Research Papers: They published a series of pioneering research papers in the 1980s that integrated insights from psychology and economics to better understand human behaviour.
• Behavioural economics: Together, they form the bedrock of the contemporary field of behavioural economics.

• Legacy of Kahneman: Among his most influential works is the dichotomy between System 1 and System 2 thinking. 
  • System 1: It is quick, intuitive, and nearly automatic
  • System 2:  It  is slow, deliberative, and cautious. 

Daniel Kahneman: His Major Contributions

• Contribution to Judgement and Decision-making: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky made substantial contributions to the field of judgement and decision-making, which deals with how human beings make choices in different situations.
• ‘Attention and Effort’(1973): His first book,  summarised contemporary literature on divided attention, a significant challenge in multitasking. 
  • He delved into focused attention, examining the dynamics of what captures an individual’s awareness, as well as selective attention. 
  • He collaborated with Anne Triesman, a prominent cognitive psychologist and his spouse, on various papers concerning attention, memory, recall, and visual perception. 
  • Triesman passed away in 2018.
• Judgement Under Uncertainty’(1982): This book cemented the connections between Kahneman’s early work in mental effort and the then emerging area of decision-making. 
• Loss aversion Theory: Daniel Kahneman and Tversky’s experiments hypothesised that individuals are more sensitive to loss than an equivalent amount of gain, and losses have in general, greater psychological impact on individuals.
  • The results changed the world of decision-making, which previously held that individuals only looked at outcomes in an absolute way, not as changes in outcomes. 

• Study of happiness and well-being: He made substantial contributions to the study of happiness and well-being later. His work focused on measuring happiness using multiple methods such as the reconstruction method.
• Book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’: It is among the best-selling books in psychology and business.
• Nobel Prize for Economics: He won the economics Nobel Prize in 2002 with experimental economist Vernon L. Smith.

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