Daniel Kahneman: Biography Of This Psychologist And Researcher
Daniel Kahneman (1934) is an American-nationalized Israeli psychologist who has carried out important studies in decision making, judgment, theory of economic behavior and economic behavior, as well as experimental economics. The latter have impacted not only psychology but economics and human activity in business, an issue that led him to obtain the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002.
Next we will see a biography of Daniel Kahneman as well as some of his main contributions.
Daniel Kahneman: biography of this influential psychologist
Daniel Kahneman was born on March 5, 1934 in Tel Aviv, Israel; while his mother, originally from Lithuania, visited relatives. He lived his early years in Paris, a city to which both parents moved in 1920.
His stay in Paris was marked by the political context of the Nazi occupation, when his father was arrested and later released. In his writings, Kahneman himself has related that the experience of Living in this context significantly marked his later interest in the study of sociology
In 1948, Kahneman and his family moved to Palestine, shortly before the creation of the State of Israel. Eight years later, in 1954, Daniel Kahneman specialized in psychology with a bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As soon as he had completed his training as a psychologist, Kahneman He worked in the psychology area of the Israeli defense forces
After this he continued his professional development in the United States, specifically at the University of Berkeley, California, where he earned a doctorate in Psychology in 1958. As a teacher and researcher, Kahneman has worked at the Hebrew University, the University of Michigan, and Harvard University, among others. He currently serves as an academic at Princeton University.
Initially, Kahneman focused his research on the study of attention and perception. Later he focused on the study of two processes that would ultimately lead him to be recognized as one of the most influential psychologists of the time: judgment and decision making However, towards the 90’s, Kahneman took a new turn in his studies and began researching in the area of hedonistic psychology.
Law of small numbers
Together with another psychologist of Israeli origin, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman developed important theories in behavioral economics For example, the law of small numbers.
Through this concept, psychologists verified a fairly common phenomenon: the tendency to value the sampling distribution as population-based, regardless of the size of the sample; which results in hasty and biased conclusions.
Tversky’s mathematical studies and Kahneman’s training in science led to developing this law and critically looking at various scientific investigations as well as explaining various phenomena. such as the interpretation of political preferences and various cognitive biases
Prospect theory
One of Kahneman’s most recognized theories, which he developed in collaboration with Tversky, is prospect theory. It is recognized as one of the main theories of behavioral economics, and suggests that, The less uncertainty about the consequences of a decision, the greater the risk orientation of some people.
Before his theories, economics maintained that decisions were determined by the calculation of final profits for each possible scenario, as well as the possibility that the latter would actually be obtained. Thus, each person would assess which is the most likely scenario and make a decision based on that.
However, Kahneman’s research showed that people were unable to analyze complex situations involving decision making when there was uncertainty about their future consequences. In fact, the evaluation based on the probability of occurrence of a given result was an exercise absent for decision-making in almost all the people who participated. Thus, they maintained that said exercise is finally based on determining what the value of profits and losses is and not only in the most probable final result.
hedonistic psychology
By connecting work in economics with hedonistic psychology, Kahneman develops a new line of research focused on analyzing the well-being situation and the possibilities of achieving a full state of happiness based on the economic situation.
This line connects psychology with economics and sociology, since it investigates the effects of economic dynamics on individual psychology and social practices. In the same sense, the center of this theory is not so much economics as research on quality of life.
Main works
The text “Pupillary diameter and memory load”, from 1966 and published in the Science Journal, was one of the pioneering works on this topic. Later, in 1971 and together with Amos Tversky, Kahneman published the article “Belief in the law of small numbers”, a work that inaugurated the theory that bears the same name.
In 1979 they published the article “Prospective theory: an analysis of decisions under risk”, which It became one of the most influential works of both psychologists
Likewise, for his contributions to the understanding of decision making in the economic context, as well as in cognitive psychology related to this, Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 and together with Vernon Smith
In 2011 he received the Talcott Parsons Award from the Academy of Arts and Sciences, for his contributions to the social sciences. In the same public the best-seller Think fast, think slow.
